99 Hours
by Indigo2831
Summary: Steve's got 99 problems, but a missing Danny is his biggest one.
1. The Beginning In The End

Hi, everyone! I'm back with a BIG story. I've been working on this for weeks, and I'm so excited to share it with all of you. I just started the last chapter, so a new installment should be posted every few days. I started writing fan fiction as a way to find my voice as a writer. Lately, I've kind of found myself in a comfort zone, so I designed this story to challenge to write something new and different. It's been a lot of work, planning and research, but the end product was something I'm really proud of.

I'm delaying the inevitable, so read and please let me know what you think!

**Note: 1. I do not write death fics. 2. This is essentially two stories in one. It follows Steve in the present and Danny in the past.  
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><p><strong>Chapter - The End in the Beginning<strong>

**Present  
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For the first time decades, Steve McGarrett, one of the most elite soldiers in the world, carried no weapon, nor did he scan the horizon for not threat as he walked out beneath a sky of layered blues and star-studded blacks.

The only thing he carried, besides suffocating, heart-hammering dread in the days since Danny's abduction was grasped in his left hand—a simple restaurant timer, a proverbial detonator, and he had a pretty good idea whose life would be blown apart when it finally hit zero. Steve banged the clock against his leg and hurled it down in the sand, snarling with hatred. He knew everything about the damned thing—it was made of dye-injected ABS plastic at a Rubbermaid factory in Atlanta, Georgia; it had an LCD digital readout, and came in three different colors, black, white and red—and yet it told him nothing about who had snatched Danny or why.

He squinted at the numbers in the darkness. _3 minutes, 48 seconds._ And picked it up again, brushing off the sand.

The air smelled faintly of salt and sand and the water that lapped leisurely at his feet brought the Navy man no solace, no reprieve from the lurid nightmares of the last five days. As much as he'd fallen apart since, he wasn't sure he could handle what would happen when the clock stopped.

Steve was a study of a man at his worst, only clinging to sanity because he had no idea what would happen if he let go. The muscles of his back and jaw bunched tighter than the errant rock underfoot; his mind a bustle of half-formed desperate prayers. _Please let him live. Please let him be okay. Please bring Danny home. _

Without warning, Steve's knees buckled and hit the soft, damp sand. Exploding with uncontrollable rage and grief, Steve stuffed his hand into his mouth and screamed around his first, biting down on his knuckles until he tasted warm copper. Yet throughout the well-deserved tantrum, his left hand remained locked on the clock that had appeared on his lanai a day after Danny had gone missing, set mysteriously at 99 hours, a grainy Polaroid of a broad-shouldered man wearing a dirty dress shirt, tie speckled with blood, and a black bag over his head. As soon as Steve had ripped it off the clock, the timer set with an innocuous beep and hadn't stopped.

Until now.

The same tinny beep invaded his thoughts and he looked at the clock at the zeros flashing. He imagined killing blows, gunshots puncturing that skull beneath the black headbag, the stopping of hearts and the macabre puddling of blood, the flatline of a dialtone.

_Please don't let him suffer. _

Steve hoisted himself to his feet and promptly folded at the waist again, sick to his stomach and lightheaded. He had been subsisting on a little more than coffee and adrenaline, so it wasn't the first time his body had failed him as much as he'd failed Danny.

When he made it to his feet again, he doggedly trudged back towards the house, grief blossoming like a morbid flower with every step.

It took Steve a moment to realize that the garish blue tint the shrubbery and sand had taken wasn't due to his the perpetual headache behind his eyes, but from the sirens of the two squad cars casting a ghastly pall over his property.

For the first time in 99 hours, Steve dropped the red clock and bolted for the house in a dead run.

The next few minutes happened in jagged, strobing glimpses of time that Steve would never be able to recall in coherent order. Kono sobbed, crumpled against the fender of his truck, hand covering her mouth.

Kamekona used his massive size to corral Gabby up the front walk, even as she hollered, ugly, horrified, like a wounded bird.

"Keep him back!" Chin sprang up from the ground and ran towards him, arms flung wide, face stretched in terror. "Steve, stay back. Don't look." There was blood on his hands.

The long-simmering shock and newfound confusion rendered his reflexes slower than normal and Chin had managed to shove him back a few feet before Steve caught a glimpse of a swathe of soiled linen and an outflung arm covered in a dusting of golden blond hair. "Danny. DANNY!" Steve shouted, mouth dry and heart cantering. "Chin, let me go."

"Steve, you cannot see this. Please stay back. _Steve, please_."

"Chin, I'm warning you, get the out of my way. _Move_."

With a growl, Steve freed himself from Chin's grasp with violent efficincy and stepped over him with indifference as soon as he dropped. Three strides later, Steve stood a foot away from where Danny Williams lay, filthy and naked and beaten, half-wrapped in a stained tarp as if he'd been thrown in the drive way like trash waiting for collection. Steve fell to his knees, trembling, and covered him up, preserving a scant amount of dignity for his fallen friend.

Danny's face was unrecognizable, beneath the red earth packed into a patchy beard and the swelling, and the flaxen hair was now tinged with both congealed and wet blood. Steve lifted a hand to cover his mouth as another scream threatened and felt the wetness there, smearing against his cheek. He stared at it, mind blank, and then he looked at Danny's head, seeing the tearing of skin, and maybe even the ivory of bone. Steve leaned forward and finally saw what Chin hadn't wanted him to. Danny's eyes were open, still brilliantly blue, but unfocused and without light, because his partner, best friend, and a father of one, had been shot in the head.

**_120 hours ago_**

_Danny never had never been blessed it was a sixth sense or Super SEAL's spidey sense. It was why, at thirty-five years old, he was an unapologetically bitter after having been blindsided by the tragedies that others probably saw hurdling towards him like a friggin' asteroid in a disaster movie. His divorce, Matty's embezzlement, Jenna Kaye's double-cross had all blackened a part of him that believed in goodness and civility and happy endings, and left Danny that much more cynical._

_It was why he didn't expect the frantic, rain-drenched woman standing by the side of the road with a smashed fender with a car seat in the back and a bleeding leg would lure him into an awning between two buildings, "to escape the rain," and into an ambush. One second she was clutching her purse and sobbing, and another, she was elbowing to the face like a muay thai fighter. Danny staggered, nose bleeding, eyes watering, and before he could grip his service weapon, something was harshly threaded over his head and yanked taut. A blindfold and garrote all-in-one._

_Mind reeling, Danny tried to discern up from down, inhale, and track voices all at once, but it was disorientingly silent, save for the scuffle of shoes and the pounding of rain. All of his life, Danny had been underestimated because of his size. No one really knew how tenacious he could be until he was too late. Danny would and had fought like a junkyard dog to make sure he was able to come home for his daughter or back up his partner, and this time was no different. Panic licked through his blood stream, because this wasn't a Five-0 tactical op, it was an all-out guerrilla ambush, and he was already down one sense and outnumbered._

_He twisted and stomped blindly aiming for feet. His elbows jutted out and connected unprotected ribs. Calloused hands gripped his neck and slammed his face into an unyielding and unforgiving surface—probably brick, judging by the way it grated skin off his forehead and shoulder. The second strike stole robbed him the coordination of his limbs as his head throbbed and unconsciousness loomed. Blood and starbursts trickled into his eyes. The next thing he knew he was forced to his knees, zip-ties securing his arms behind him. A merciless twist of his headbag literally smothered anymore attempts to escape as Danny's head spun and his felt lost inside of his body. Once he was limp and dangerously close to passing out from lack of oxygen, they dragged him backwards and hurtled him up and down. He landed haphazardly on a hard surface, shoulder and hip making an impressive thwack on impact._

_Fear took on a whole new meaning when he heard the gunning of an engine and knew he was being taken. The pain in his head didn't matter, neither did his bound wrists. He'd move mountains to escape and kill with his bare hands if necessary._

_Before he could even mount a last-ditch offense, the air was kicked out of him, ribs bending dangerously from the force of the blows, chest aching._

_And the van ambled away._

_He dipped in and out, falling into black and returning to the same in a disorienting haze of terror and confusion._

_When the vehicle stopped, Danny was hauled out of the back. The breeze was steady and he listened carefully, hearing the catcalls of wild birds and the hissing rustle of leaves and grass. The earth was soft, but rocky beneath his feet. It hadn't rained here, which meant Danny was miles outside of Honolulu._

_After a metallic squeak and glide, the kidnappers shoved him onto his knees, cut his zipties and slammed behind him. Chains twinkled and a lock clicked._

_He snatched off the headbag and cursed. There was barely any light, just a few errant rays that leaked in from the cracks in the door and a bit from the roof. The first thing that he noticed was the heat, sweltering and steamy, like the inside of a car after a sunny day. After just a few minutes, Danny's skin was slicked with a fine sheen of perspiration. By the time Danny had tried to break down the door and beat against the walls, he was dripping._

_His prison was essentially a four walls made of corrugated metal and a dirt floor and a bucket in the corner._

_Danny fixated on that bucket with alarming intensity, shaking with terror and helplessness. He'd never had a sixth sense about anything, never predicted that he'd be kidnapped in the middle of the day in paradise, but Danny knew by the presence of a simple household item that he was going to die here._


	2. How It Began

Thanks so much for all of the feedback and author's alerts. **  
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><p><strong>Chapter 2 – How It Began<strong>

**One Week Earlier  
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Ellis George's presence always imbued the office with a miserable tension.

The amicable chatter of a quiet afternoon transformed into tip-lipped greetings and impersonal handshakes. Ellis was an honorable, high-ranking CIA Department Director, but it was his position as the late Jenna Kaye's boss that inspired the air of discomfort. Ellis' generous smile told Steve that he would have been more easy-going if the circumstances were different, if Jenna hadn't been manipulated and murdered by Wo Fat.

He shook Steve's hand and echoed Steve's grim nod. "Nice to see you again, Commander."

Steve stood up and gestured to Ellis to follow him to his office. "You too, Director."

Once inside, Ellis studied the bounty of medals and awards on the walls and shelves, pausing at a picture of a Jenna Kaye laughing with Kono and Danny, her arms thrown around them both. "We never recovered her body for her parents. The commune where Wo Fat used was demolished soon after you were rescued."

Steve's eyes always watered as he thought of Jenna's parents forced to have a funeral with an empty casket as he had with his mother. He'd never find peace with Jenna's murder, part of him hated her for double-crossing them and endangering the lives of his entire team and but a louder, less selfish part knew that no one deserved to die on a filthy cement floor, chained to a wall with no hope left. She hadn't even fought it.

"I'm so sorry, Director. My team would have gotten her out if they'd been able. The situation was just too tenuous I hear." The rescue was a hazed of pain, adrenaline and delirious laughter.

"I'm glad you didn't risk it. There have been enough casualties already, and Jenna wasn't there anyway. Not in the way that counted." Ellis ran his fingers through his neatly parted hair that was more salt than pepper. "Look, Commander, the Jenna that I know never would've done what she did. It was completely out of her character. She was…"

Steve interrupted with the shake of his head. "Jenna was a sweet person, and a hell of an analyst. She'd only been here five minutes and she managed to save my partner's life. It's a testament to how awesome she was that Wo Fat was able to get to her. I don't…I don't hold her responsible for anything, I've told you that. I'm just that much more motivated in bringing Wo Fat to justice. For killing her and breaking her before he did."

Some of the guilt receded from Ellis's muddy blue eyes and was replaced with an impassioned light as he pulled a manila folder out of the leather bound notebook he carried. "That's why I'm here in person. Wo Fat has been my pet project for the past few months. We've been tracking Wo Fat's known operations on the big island, China and Mexico."

"There's been some activity?"

Ellis laid the satellite photographs on his desk and huffed with disbelief. "Just the opposite, actually. Wo Fat's lieutenants have pulled out of all three locations. His operations have shutdown in the past six weeks. The DEA already raided and seized his operations on the big island based on this intel. He's all but done there."

Steve studied the high res photos of known human trafficking and drug labs that once hummed with thermal activity were left with cold readings, black smudges of abandonment.

"We think he's running scared. Whatever went down in Korea, whatever you have on him, he thinks you're getting closer and he's pulling back. Steve, this is a win."

It was the soldier who looked at the photographs again, and he could only see it as a loss of leads and Wo Fat's trail going cold. "How exactly? If he goes into hiding, we'll never find him."

"Commander, I don't think you're underestimating the magnitude of this development. You're a SEAL and I know you boys will stop at nothing to get your man. But this," he lifted the pictures, crunching them at the sides, "is a good thing. The women he trafficked are re-surfacing. He's all but stopped manufacturing drugs—that's millions of dollars worth of meth and heroin and cocaine off the streets. Even if we never bring him to justice, this is good, Steve. It means Jenna didn't and Josh didn't die for nothing. It means more lives saved. At the end of the day, that's all we're trying to do just in very different ways."

Steve never handled good news well, because as a soldier, there was always another battle, another enemy, another injustice. It was even harder to swallow now when he was mired in the case as a victim who'd been tortured, his friend and family killed. Even if he was never able to put a bullet in Wo Fat's head himself, he couldn't deny that this organization was crumbling and 'Shelburne' had left him running scared. It wasn't the punishment he deserved, but it was a damaging start.

"I think it's time for both of us to go have a beer in Jenna's name."

Ellis actually grinned, dropping the starched professionalism of a CIA director and clapped Steve on the shoulder. "Best idea you've had yet."

"Let me call my partner, we can tell you how Jenna barged in here acting with fake credentials and a power suit and tried to steal my files."

Steve dialed Danny's number and rolled his eyes as the voicemail clicked on. "Danno, hey. Ellis and I are grabbing a beer at the…" he glanced out the window to find that it was raining, "not at the Hilton, but at that bar down the street from headquarters. Meet us there."

-H50-

After Ellis' visit, Steve felt a little less of the burden he always carried. He slept easier and woke up after six nightmare-free hours of sleep and went to the cemetery to visit his parents, tell his father he was making headway. When he returned, body yearning for a run and a swim, Steve Gabby, Danny's girlfriend, knocking on his door. The normally polished curator was appropriately unkempt considering it was barely six in the morning—her hair was damp and she wore a pair of yoga pants and a Yankees t-shirt Steve recognized as Danny's.

As soon as she saw him, she rushed over with impatience. "Steve, is Danny alright?"

"No, he's fine as far as I know…why?"

Gabby wrung the strap of her purse and sighed, eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses even though the sun was just beginning to rise. "We were supposed to have dinner yesterday afternoon after he picked Grace up from school, but he never showed up. He never even called. I mean, I know you guys have to work insane hours, and I thought maybe something had…" Gabby inhaled slowly in an attempt to collect herself. "I'm new to this whole 'dating-a-cop' thing, so I'm trying not to jump to conclusions, but I already leaped…and I'm scared. He always calls."

Steve put a hand on her shoulder and steered her towards the house. "Sometimes Danny gets mad at me…or the island, because he hates it, and he has to decompress. He probably turned his phone off and fell asleep watching 'Goodfellas.' Let's not worry until we have a reason too, all right?"

Gabby seemed even more distressed as he led her inside. "What are you talking about? Danny loves Hawaii."

Steve coughed to smother the laughter and offered Gabby a seat at his kitchen table and a cup of coffee. "He has a reason to now." He winked at her. "We're going to call him and if I can't get him to answer, then we'll go get him."

He was able to keep Gabby calm and smiling even though Danny didn't answer his phone or his door. He tamped down the stirrings of fear when Rachel hadn't heard from him. He refused to freak out himself until they found they activated the GPS in the Camaro and found it parked neatly on the side of a road on Danny's way home, doors unlocked, keys on the seat.

Twelve hours later, Steve sat in his truck, head in his hands and finally conceded that something was terribly, horribly wrong. They'd dumped the footage from the security cameras next to the hardware store where Danny's had left his car only to find grainy footage of 31 seconds of his partner exiting it and walking around the other side and nine hours of his car sitting there, the sun setting and rising without Danny ever returning.

A canvass of the area revealed some waterlogged muddy footprints and skids in the rocks. It could have been signs of a scuffle or it could have been there for months. Thanks to the rain, the footprints were less than useless.

At this point, Danny had missing for twenty-three hours. With no evidence to figure out who took him and no leads to try to find him.

Steve punched the steering wheel unchecked force, the horn squeaked in response. The resulting pain told him that his nightmares had bled into his reality and Danny was gone. A numbing dread cocooned him. He had the grisly inclination to press his black suit for the funeral.

Because there was always a funeral.

The devastation crested like ocean waves and Steve had nothing to chase or battle or kill and he had no idea how to cope, so he surrendered to the inexplicable fear, allowed it to poison him and overwhelm him. And then he remembered Danny clutching an automatic weapon emerging from the Korean jungle, holding Steve together on the plane to Seoul, and finally falling apart on the plane home because they'd left Jenna's body there. Danny had assembled a freaking strike team to rescue his partner, and Steve had to do the same. He wiped his face and leapt out of his truck, dogged determination and his training finally kicking in. He ran inside to grab some protein bars and the keys to Danny's house and bolted back out to his truck. As he thumped down the stairs, Steve saw it: an innocuously red clock placed on his porch railing.

He drew his gun in an instinct, checking beneath the boards and the perimeter of the house before approaching the device that flashed with zeros. He listened for ticking or irregular humming but heard nothing, save for the blood rushing in his ears. Holstering his gun, Steve lifted it with caution and inspected it, finding nothing suspicious until discovered the polaroid. All he needed to see were those broad shoulders and that ridiculous dress shirt and he knew it was Danny. He snatched the picture off the clock, all protocol forgotten, and nearly dropped it when it beeped in his hands and started counting down from ninety-nine hours.

His knees wobbled and his heart pounded and just taking a breath became a challenge as Steve whipped out his cell phone, dialing without taking his eyes off the clock. "Chin, we got a lead."


	3. Death Becomes Him

Thanks again for the feedback and alerts! It means a lot. This is a pretty big chapter. Enjoy!**  
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><p><strong>Chapter 3 – Death Becomes Him<strong>

**PRESENT**

Steve's throat hurt.

Dark ragged screams throbbed into the night air and crescendoed over the approaching sirens, the crackle of radios.

He scrambled back away from Danny's body, face hot, hands cold. Broken.

He stared at the entire scene with a detached awe as a rabid defiance filled him with one purpose.

Steve crawled back over to his fallen friend, ignoring the blood and the odor and the sharp protrusions of his cheekbones and touched him with reverence. He laid his head on his chest, and cried the way he'd never gotten to do with his mother or his father. Part of him was grateful that he'd had the chance to say goodbye, to look upon Danny's wasted body and recognize death there. Despite that, he'd forever hate this day. And he'd never be the same. Steve would never recover.

There, during the infinitesimal breadth of time between heartbeats, Steve felt Danny's body shudder, and heard the faintest wisp of inhaled air and the gurgle of an exhale. Steve's eyes flared opened and he moved his arms, bracing them on either side of him. With an ear to his chest, Steve listened instead of mourned. Danny's heart thumped a feeble, frenetic beat.

Steve dug two fingers deep into his carotid and placed one hand on his diaphragm, and found signs of life.

"He's alive!" He hollered. "Danny, hey, the ambulances are on their way. Hang on for a little bit more. Just a little bit more."

Steve tried not to look at his body, at the damage there, but he didn't miss the blue bloom of track marks in his arm, or the heat that wafted off his dry, brittle skin or the mottled blue-black of an obvious beating along his torso.

The light thump against his fingers stopped as did the rapid rise and fall of Danny's chest.

With a growl, Steve pushed Danny's head back, opened his mouth and breathed for him, pushing everything he had left into his lungs.

Hand over hand, he pumped Danny's chest, not thinking about anything but revival of men in the field who had literal holes blown out of them, and how with sheer tenacity and a little help from their brothers in arms, they were smiling and laughing months later. If they could do it, Danny could too.

There was a hand on his back. Steve shrugged it off and sank down, covering Danny's cracked lips with his own. Each breath was draining him, but he wouldn't stop.

"Steve…what can I do?" Kono cried.

He wasn't wasting any of his air. "Ambulance. Guide 'em in."

Steve dismissed the activity behind him as unimportant details, and it was just him and his partner, fighting as they always did. It was a dogged battle of life, breaths and compressions, heart and lungs. He held the Navy's free diving record and could hold his breath for a little over five minutes and that was with the crushing pressure of the ocean and the currents pulling at him like sirens. He would breathe for Danny for hours if he had too.

The ambulance careened around the corner of his street, sirens thunderous_. _

Dizzy and sweating, Steve leaned over Danny again as his body twitched and fought to inhale. He looked down in time to see Danny's eyelashes quiver and bruised lids close completely. His body didn't move again, but it was all the encouragement Steve needed.

The paramedics and firefighters arrived and Steve slid away, letting them work.

_**Hour 92**_

_The suffocating heat pressed him flat against the dirt._

_After hours, Danny could only lie there while being baked like a potato and even nightfall hadn't provided much relief. He panted as nausea curdled in his stomach and his head throbbed._

_If McGarrett were here, he already would've fashioned a bomb out of mud and a belt buckle. But his brain was melting and his thoughts were nothing but disjointed sludge. He curled his fingers in the dirt and gaped into the dark wondering how long they were going to leave him here and who had taken him. Danny was oddly grateful that Grace was on the mainland, enjoying a week of rainbow-hued fun at Disneyland with Rachel and Stan._

_It was the flash of his daughter's excitement as she sang along with Aladdin the night before she left that got Danny up and moving._

_He quickly discovered that his vision grayed when he tried to stand, so he crawled along the wall, unsure of what to do. A muscle cramp in his biceps dropped him back onto the floor. He groaned, clutching the muscle and tried to knead out the cramp with clumsy fingers. He kicked angrily at the side of the shack because he couldn't do anything but ride out the bunching agony._

_Danny closed his eyes, refusing to let helplessness and fear overwhelm him. He concentrated on breathing and wished he would have packed grenades in his lunch._

_The cramp subsided but Danny remained collapsed on his side. His eyes shot open when a whisper of a breeze tickled his face. He pressed a hand to the sun-warmed metal mere inches from his nose. There he could feel the edge of the metal where it met the soft ground. The dirt was loose and light. He dug down and carved out a handful of dirt with his hands. A band of blue twilight from the rising sun tumbled in._

_"So maybe I could gopher my way to freedom."_

_Energized, Danny clamored to his knees and dug as fast as he could. Sweat dripped from his hairline into his eyes, but he didn't stop. If he could dig out enough, he could shimmy out under the fence and head into the jungle. Danny knew it had to happen soon because the sun was rising and the heat would too._

_He whooped with joy as he cleared a few inches and the trade winds that kept Hawaii from ever being so cloyingly hot began waft inside, cooling him down._

_Using both hands pressed together, he evacuated more soil as fast as he could until something sharp stabbed his fingers. He pulled them back with a gasp and saw that two of his nails were torn and his fingertips were bleeding. Cursing, Danny moved closer and blew the dirt away, exposing a band of concrete a mere four or five inches from below the end of the metal walls lined with barbed wire. Taunting him. After more deft and exploratory digging, Danny knew that the wall traveled feet below the surface._

_He was well and thoroughly trapped._

_Danny flopped back to the ground, spent and dejected. Chance had given him strength and without it, he could only concentrate on how woozy he was after just a few minutes of being vertical. He was so thirsty his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. The air that lilted into the box was fresh and cool, so Danny dug two more trenches around the edge of the walls. At least the circulating air made it easier to breathe and cooled the heat that hummed from his skin._

_As the sun rose, Danny pressed his face to each of the three holes, trying to see anything. On two sides he saw nothing but the same red earth, but on the last side, there was lush foliage, glistening with the silver of dew._

_An idea struck him. His gun and cell phone were gone, of course, but he was never frisked when he was taken. With shaking hands, Danny dug into his back pocket and pulled out the spare evidence bag that he always carried. When Grace was six, he helped her build a terrarium with a few succulents and his mom's clear glass cookie jar. It was a fun way to kill a few hours on a boring afternoon, and Grace loved watching the water condense on the lid of the cookie jar only to drip down and onto the plants like rain. With the plastic evidence bag, Danny could do the same thing. He angled his arm out of the hole inching forward and pushing as far as it could go even when it was snagged painfully by the barbed wire. He grabbed fistfuls of foliage at the base, taking care to keep the roots intact. Gently, he pulled his hand inside and stuffed the greens inside of the bag. When it was full, he twisted it up, preserving the adhesive seal, and mashed it with his fists, trapping any liquid in the roots and dew on the leaves. He set the bag in the sun and waiting as long as he could stand it for the water to collect on the plastic, and greedily drank the few swallows of liquid from the roots and the morning dew, sighing at the cold but earthy moisture on his parched tongue. After refilling the bag, he buried it in the corner of the room, taking care to make sure the dirt looked flat and undisturbed._

_Danny heard the rattle of chains and the door opened with a metallic bang. The light sliced through the darkness with blinding thrusts and Danny hissed, covering his eyes. A masked figure loomed in, hauling him to his feet and without a word, and launched into the metal wall. Wheezing and reeling, Danny hit to the dirt below, grateful he had the presence of mind to bring his arms up to cover his face and head._

_Voices howled as Danny was kicked, his forearms taking most of the force. Pain ping-ponged up shoulder and into his neck._

_Without a hesitation, Danny struck out with his legs, aiming for his attacker's kneecap. The leg buckled and the man cried out. Furious, the detective clamored to his feet. Beyond the downed thug, he saw the shadowy figures of three others, watching and cheering._

_When his assailant advanced again, he finally understood. This wasn't a guard-assisted beat down—this was hostage fight club, and he had to win. Danny wasted no time in launching an uppercut at the rising man and followed that up with a punch to the throat. He had at least fifty pounds and a half-foot on Danny and didn't move with the dehydrated sluggishness that dragged down his own limbs and muddied his reflexes, so he had to be aggressive and economical in his attack._

_Danny managed to defend himself for a few more advances, blocking punches and leg sweeps, but after a day of baking in a godforsaken box without food or water, his endurance was laughable. The floor see-sawed beneath him and his head felt like a discarded party balloon. It was all he could do to keep his feet. Soon Danny's flank and face were rocked by blows he never saw coming. He deflected the man's advanced with a graceless flail of his legs and bought enough to space to stand. A haymaker that would make Sugar Ray Lenard proud catapulted him into the wall, graying his vision and jamming his shoulder. The masked audience laughed at his yelp of pain._

_It was out of sheer luck that Danny ducked, narrowing missing another punch. The man's fist hit the wall with a clang and a snap that echoed throughout the small box. Clutching his undoubtedly broken hand, he cleverly sank into the shadows of the cage, where the light didn't reach. With his right cheek already swelling, Danny could barely see. He tried to listen for him over the sound of his own jack-hammering heart and the whoops of the gawkers._

_Without warning, he tackled Danny, lifting him clear off his feet before bodily driving him into the dirt so hard, his teeth sliced into his tongue, filling his mouth with blood, as air whooshed out of his lungs and vibrant colors smeared through his vision like spray paint and his back hummed with a thorough pain. The man was on top of him manipulating his body, but Danny couldn't move beneath the two hundred pounds that crushed him. He smelled someone else's sweat, and for a brief second their eyes met. His were dark, furious and terrified mirror of Danny's own._

_The man twisted, falling on his side and Danny screamed as his right arm was forced straight, passed the point of flexion. A tearing agony fireworked from his elbow as a leg was swung over his head in an attempt to lock the arm in place, so it could be broken or pulled from the socket. Pain was the best motivator and he was moving purely on instinct drilled into him from years of having a younger brother who outgrew him at thirteen. Flat on his back and nearly pinned immobile, Danny bucked, planting his feet and arching his back. With his left arm, he grabbed the back of his opponent's knees and pushed, milking every atomof might from his muscles and heaved the man off him. A punch to the groin freed his arm and sent an indignant yowl bouncing off the walls. Danny forced himself to his feet, cradling the dead arm that felt boneless and tingly, and kicked his attacker until his face was pulped and bloody and he no longer moved._

_A man emerged from his creepy audience, applauding him with gloved hands. Danny snarled at him, swaying as he stood. He lapped the blood dribbled from his lips and tried not to puke._

_The man's face was so alluringly generic that Danny wondered if his face was designed in a lab. His olive skin was devoid of any texture, it looked like it had been airbrushed or polished. His features had a symmetry and a perfection that seemed artificial. Danny knew why he didn't even bother wearing a mask, like the others. A composite sketch would match a thousand men on O'ahu alone, and somehow it wouldn't._

_"You have more fight than I anticipated after our Grace period. Maybe you need to cook a little longer." His tone was rich and he had a vaguely European accent like one of Grace's well-traveled schoolmates or Madonna._

_Danny didn't miss the inflection on his daughter's name, but he didn't dare react._

_"I know the accommodations are a little spartan, but I did the best I can do on short notice."_

_He couldn't help himself. "It ain't the Four Seasons, that's for sure."_

_A manicured eyebrow lifted with approval. "You are right about that. I'm afraid it'll have to do until you leave us. I'm sure you understand."_

_"I appreciate the hospitality but I can leave. I wouldn't want to put you out." His ribs ached._

_The man ignored him. "Do you believe in choices, Detective?" He stood a mere foot away from him, apparently not at all concerned that Danny would rip his throat out. The suit he wore was meticulously tailored and oddly, the thread sparkled in the low light. "Minor choices—turning left instead of right; taking job A and not job B—have a profound effect on the course of our lives. Do you ever think about that?"_

_"Still grappling with that whole 'Chicken/Egg' thing, so no."_

_"I've always ruminated about how important choices are all the time. For example, if this poor man—a lover of home-brewed beers and father of three—would have triumphed in my little test, he would have gotten to live."_

_The masked thugs jumped to action and dragged Danny's opponent out of the cage by his ankles. Silence invaded the box as the man paced around it, if he noticed the foot-wide trenches Danny made, he didn't seem to mind. He didn't seem concerned that Danny would overpower him with his guards gone, and Danny wasn't sure felt a little insulted._

_"You got a name?" He asked._

_"Sir." He answered impatiently. "Any minute now," he breathed lifting his gloved hands like a conductor commanding his orchestra._

_Two gunshots popped in the distance. The strange man shook his head, strange face contorted in mock pity. "Such a waste."_

_Danny vibrated with rage so intense, he could barely see, and it took all he had not to kill the man who'd just murdered a stranger for losing some arbitrary cage match between prisoners. It was self-preservation—and yes, cowardice—that kept him rooted in his spot, seething, even though they were alone._

_"And that right there, the way you didn't react is why you're still alive, Detective. Keep making the right choices and you'll be back dolling out justice to the citizens of Hawaii before you know it." The man grinned like a Chesire cat and patted Danny's swelling cheek. "I don't even care about the little airholes you dug."_

_If he'd had enough moisture in his mouth, Danny would have spit in his face._

_"Is there anything I can bring you?" He asked, eyes sparkling with sinister mischief._

_Ever the smartass, Danny responded, "Water."_

_"Water it is, detective."_

_The door shut, leaving Danny in the beaten and boiling darkness. Devastation crept into the widening chinks in his armor. He could withstand a lot, he'd weathered the storm of divorce, the loss of his home and being nearly stripped of his parental rights. But he wasn't built to carry the burden of getting another man killed nor could he handle captivity and torture by a deranged goofball with a fetish for nip-tucks._

_He was doing to die here. And it was going to be gruesome and painful and disgusting, like something out of a "Saw" movie, and there was nothing he could do about it. He wasn't a Navy SEAL. He was a cop from Jersey who was wrapped around his daughter's little finger and had stopped growing three years early. Danny couldn't do this. He wouldn't survive it. He swayed where he stood, gagging up blood and bile, choking on futility._

_Pain glinted in him, hot and bright. He tasted death and cowardice on his tongue. A shiver fluttered up is spine and settled into his chest and putting down roots, and he knew his adrenaline was fading, and the dehydration and physical exertion were taking its toll. His muscles started to spasm, quaking with an intensity that drove him to his knees. Danny mewed as his body convulsed, trying to fight through it, but he felt his eyes rolling back and exhaustion overwhelming him. He passed out, grateful for the escape._


	4. Thanks For Making Me A Fighter

Thanks for all the love. Here's the next chapter, because I hate keeping you all waiting. Let me know what you think! **  
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><p><strong>Chapter 4 – Thanks For Making Me A Fighter<strong>

_**Hour 78**_

_Danny dreamed about cherry-lime snow cones._

_It had been his favorite treat as a kid who spent his days playing football in Bobby Fieri's backyard and doling out construction paper tickets to the kids who crossed against the light. He even had a particular method of eating it, always making sure there was a bit of both pink and green ice on his spoon, so it could get a shock of sugar and a jolt of citrus in the same bite._

_In the heat of the box, Danny heard the giggle of children and the tinny plink of his change hitting the diner's silver counter ghosting throughout the oppressively hot cage. He wasn't in his right mind, but at least the delirium freed him from the pain of the beating and the trauma of being kidnapped. He tasted, felt the gritty ice on his tongue, even as the masked thugs banged into the room, all harsh light and gruff voices, and hauled him out into the fiery glare of the afternoon sun. Another day had passed and Danny had spent it falling in and out of consciousness. When he was awake, it had been a torturous cycle of agonizing muscle cramps, invading bugs and the soul-crushing truth that the dehydration would put him down faster than his kidnapper, who seemed to delight in traumatizing him, ever would._

_Not wanting to waste the energy by fighting his guards, Danny allowed himself to be manhandled, the tips of his shoes nudging paths through the rich Hawaiian soil. His skin was blistering hot, his face head pounded without mercy, his arm was alarmingly swollen, and after days with only a few tablespoons of water (provided by his buried evidence bag), he was pretty sure that sand ran through his veins instead of blood._

_The psychotic ringmaster stood in a trampled field dotted with withering plans and the green of dense jungle on the rolling hills behind him. In an obscenely purple suit, arms spread in invitation with black gloves capping both of his hands, Sir resembled a deranged Willy Wonka._

_Sunlight glinted harshly off of a large silver tub glinted. And Sir flailed his arms, gesturing at it like it Vanna White, and his was that devilish simper again promised nothing good. "You asked for water, detective. Ask and you shall receive."_

_It all happened too fast to comprehend. One hand scruffed the back of his neck and the others vice-gripped his arms in order to heave him up and plunge his head and shoulders down into water that was so unbearably cold, it was like being submerged into a vat of tangible pain. Danny's overheated muscles seized, because his body couldn't handle the change in extremes, leaving him unable to think or move. The shock of cold water flooding his throat and lungs ignited a primal response to thrash against the iron hands that held him under._

_They never budged._

_He flopped, drowning, until felt his lungs they would burst and starbursts wobbled in front of his eyes and then beyond. His vision began to dim, and suddenly Danny could breathe. He shuddered, gobbling up as much air as he before he was slammed down again through water, chunks of ice scrapping his face._

_It took all of the mental fortitude he had to force down the panic and the innate urge to struggle and fight. Instead he channeled all of that energy into holding his breath. Despite his aversion to the water, Danny was an accomplished swimmer and could hold his breath for almost two minutes. Surfing lessons with Kono and nature hikes with Steve had only improved his lung capacity. He coughed and hacked upon surfacing, and pulled in more air._

_The friggin' waterboarding continued for lifetimes, transforming Danny's personal hell from a pitch-black shack that reeked of his own waste and his impending death to an abyss of icy water and no oxygen and burning lungs._

_With each passing cycle, his lung capacity lessened and his resolve splintered until he pleaded for it to stop, and maybe even for them to end it all. The freezing water robbed him of lucidity and soon all he knew was shivering and suffocation._

_Finally, he lugged back into the box, wracked with convulsions. His lungs felt soggy and his eyes teared from the pain in his chest. The cold had twisted his body into gnarled angles. And it was all he could do to lay there as he retched water into the dirt._

_When Danny finally felt more than ungodly agony, the first thing he did was shimmy across the dirty towards the muffled sunlight that snuck in through his ventilation holes, hoping the small rays would warm up faster. As he crawled, the light hit the water that sluiced off of him and projected colorful prisms on the walls and floor._

_Danny gasped as the wheels in his flash-frozen brain began turning. The cage filled with maniac and hoarse laughter as Danny dug up buried bag of roots and careful opened it and dumped out the bag of wilted roots. Peeling off his saturated dress shirt, he worked carefully as he wrung out it out, capturing all of the water the fabric held in the bag, and repeated the process with the cleaner portions of his pants. When he finished, it was nearly full of pristine water. He drank one-third of it, re-sealed the bag and buried it again._

_His snark probably just saved his life._

_Danny understood with a soft clarity what he'd been doing wrong. He had been passive and scared. He'd cowered like a victim when he was anything but. It was time for him to stop giving in and start fighting back._

**Present Day**

After the death of his mother, even the smallest tasks for Steve felt like an impossibility—Christmas without her, family dinners, Mary's first prom. Except all of that happened without the tender guidance and contagious exuberance of their mother. So Steve began rebelling against everything that was impossible and making it happen whether it was breaking records in the Navy, requesting deployment to the most dangerous warzones and returned unscathed or keeping his partner tethered to this earth by sheer will.

Steve let the ambulance leave without him, staying at the scene to give his statement to the police, and watch them work the scene and postponing the inevitable. As long as he was here, Danny was still alive.

When he finally arrived at the hospital, Steve jogged through the corridors to the trauma room where Danny was being treated and skidded to a halt, mid-stride. He stood at the threshold of the doorway, automatic doors opening and closing as he triggered the motion sensors. The room had been trashed, bloody gauze pads, wrappers, blood bags and gloves littered the floor. Cabinets were thrown open, tubing was uncoiled and machines were on, but they weren't attached to a body. Among the debris of medicine sat Dr. Savannah Jensen, protective eyewear resting on her head, yellow trauma gown still on. She sat on the floor, head in her hands. Her sneakers were covered in protective booties and her face was streaked with tears. Seeing her so uncharacteristically effected scared him, and Steve was so fucking sick of being afraid. With a steadying breath, he ventured inside, "Savannah."

She shook her head, covering her face with her hand and gesturing madly with the other. "I'll be out in a minute, Steve." When he lingered, she sighed, "he's alive," she whispered. "CT, then surgery. Now gimme a minute."

Without the starched professionalism and the constant control, she looked so young with her dark hair whisked into a haphazard ponytail and tears trailing down her brown cheeks. She wrung her hands like his mother had whenever he hobbled home with another stomach-turning injury. She stared straight ahead, where the tarp had been bagged for evidence.

He opted to join her on the floor to offer support. "Are you okay?" Steve asked, although he knew the answer.

"Not even close," she wept, wiping her face. Forcing composure before she truly felt it. "And I know you're not so I won't even ask. You look like hell, Steve."

He hadn't cared about himself since Danny had been taken. "I know my limits. How's Danny?"

"What they did to him…" She huffed, shoulders jerked with disgust. "He's a mess and we still don't even know everything yet, except that his leg's broken, he's down at least 40% of his blood volume…there's severe dehydration and someone fucking burned him, and…" Savannah stopped with a horrified gasp. "God, Steve, I'm sorry. That's why…I need a break so I can calm down. I'm not a doctor right now. I'm his friend."

He waved her off. "They dumped him at my house, remember? I gave him CPR, so you toss in broken ribs, too, I'm sure, but I…" Steve paused to check his emotions. "I really need some good news here. It's been _six days,_ Savannah."

"Good news? His skull is intact. The bullet didn't penetrate it. It's worse than a graze and it almost guarantees head trauma, but it's really good news."

Steve sighed with relief. "I'll take what I can get. Thank you for treating him. Thank you for saving his life."

Savannah rested her head on Steve's shoulder. "Science can only take him so far, Steve." She arched her neck to look at him. "When he wakes up…if he wakes up…odds are…" She choked up and clamped her mouth shut.

But Steve already knew that. He grabbed her hand, needing something to hold on to and Savannah gripped it hard. "The impossible happens every day."

It was another sixteen hours before Savannah and two other doctors could present a more complete picture of Danny's injuries and a graphic picture of what he had endured: starvation three broken ribs, pleurisy*, a severe concussion and 36 stitches in his head, a broken finger, a broken tibia and fibula, a sprained elbow, lacerated liver, and a stab wound that had nicked a vital artery and resulting burn to the inner arm, he'd been dosed with drugs, and had an infections from various injuries. Steve was so utterly exhausted that most of it floated over his head but he re-focused with alarming clarity when Savannah placed a hand over Steve's and said, "You need to call his family now."

An hour later, he stood in ICU at Danny's beside. It had been nearly a week since he'd last laid eyes on his partner, and it was more than surreal now, especially with machines breathing for him, IVs rehydrating and nourishing him. Danny's head shaved on one side and heavily bandaged. He was gaunt and bruised in a medically induced coma so his body could do nothing but rest and heal. Without hesitation, Steve leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his forehead—anything more seemed like it would hurt. But that simple gesture had renewed something inside of him, restarted emotions and broken down walls that he'd turned off and erected while he was gone. While Danny's skin was still blisteringly hot, he smelled clean, not like moldering blood and old sweat as he had before. And Steve hoped that that scarring image could be replaced with this quietly hopeful one.

In the two years since they'd met, Danny had been the one to quiet the thunderous tragedy of his father's murder, the guy who nagged him like a parent when he desperately needed it, and the partner who'd follow him into any firefight. He'd been his brother and his conscience, his punching bag and his nurse. "I know you're tired, Danny. I know you've been to hell and back, but I need you to fight with everything you have. Rachel and Grace are on their way. Gabby's here, and she's a basketcase. And think of all the trouble I'll get into if you're not here to rein me in…" His chin trembled and his throat burned. "I can't…I can't do this without you, okay? I don't want to, so I'm begging you, Danny, just _stay here_."

Steve couldn't leave it that sappy, and he knew Danny wouldn't either. "At least so you can see what a disaster they made of your hair." He chuckled tiredly and didn't have the strength to stop it when it veered into raw sobs.

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><p>*Pleurisy - is an inflammation of the pleura, the lining of the pleural cavity surrounding the lungs.<p> 


	5. Chatty Danny

Once again, I'm blown away by the response. Since I didn't win the lottery yesterday, I have to ask you to keep it coming! It must be said that this is one of my favorite chapters. I hope y'all like it too.**  
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><p><strong>Chapter 5 – Chatty Danny<strong>

_**Hour 55**_

_The guards had cell phones._

_This discovery had been Danny's obsession for the past day and a half. He measured days by the rise and fall of the heat in the box and the songs of the birds. They were louder in the morning, caws tapering off as the day progressed only to resume their songs in the evening. Last night, Danny had saw a guard walking by his one of his airholes, phone pressed to his ear._

The guards had cell phones.

_He focused on that when his all-consuming hunger had forced him to eat a few fat grubs and chew on whatever dwindling greenery he could reach through the ventilation holes of his cage._

_The past torture—the hostage edition of fight club and the tub of icy water—had left him unable to take deep breaths without a concerning tightness in his chest and with more bruises than unmarred skin, and he was still coughing up water. He quickly found out that being unclean attracted bugs and rodents, so he had to use some of his stored water to keep himself as clean as he could. He kept his waste buried in a hole by the door._

_He'd reached a turning point in his captivity. Instead of bending under the weight of this nightmare, Danny _embraced_ it by refusing to sleeping to escape the torment and just waiting to die. No one had been come since the ice bath, so Danny leaned against the coolest wall of his metal home, and closed his eyes, thinking about his favorite movies and even reciting the dialogue just to hear his own voice. In his mind, James Caan's character in "Misery" was just about to be hobbled when the chains rattled when the cage was unlocked, interrupting the show. As he had planned last night, he decided to act feebler than he actually was, so he flopped on his side, closing his eyes just as the door was opened._

_His eyes watered from the searing light even through closed lids. As expected, the guards, who never spoke, slapped and manhandled him to his feet. Danny's eyes trailed to the pockets of the guard on his right, where he saw the rounded corner an iPhone perched tantalizingly in the guard's backpocket._

_He marshaled his courage and even tossed out a prayer as quickly formed a plan. Danny walked a few paces, head lolling and moaning pathetically. His performance was brilliant, although he didn't need to search farther than his own abused body for inspiration. Before he could psych himself out, Danny flopped to the ground, effectively knocked over the phone-carrying guard. Relying on his rusty pick-pocketing skills from his time in vice, Danny slipped the phone out of the guards pocket and tucked it into his boxer briefs, all while he whimpered, eyes fluttering._

_It was worth the bone-bending kick to his hip and the hammer-fist to the face. It was worth the return of the headbag and his arms being bound behind his back so tightly that his shoulders popped._

_At least he didn't have to fake the ragged sounds of distress anymore._

_Sir's buttery tones greeted him as he was guided out of the sun and into another building that was pleasantly cold. Danny thought he heard the soft hum of an air-conditioner. "Detective, what shenanigans have you been up today? I was looking forward to seeing those alluring blue eyes of yours."_

_Danny grunted as he was shoved in a chair. "I felt a little woozy and got a beatdown for my troubles," he grated out, his voice rustier than the hinges of his shack._

_"I must apologize for them, Daniel. I pay them very well and they're a touch overzealous."_

_"I'm just a guy in a headbag, but I'd suggest a pay-cut would solve your problems. Times are hard, ya know? You can find new guys at Thugs 'R Us."_

_Sir barked a haughty laugh. "You are right about that. I'm fortunate enough that my work keeps me in the 1%, but don't tell anyone, I'd hate to wake up with a yard full of angst-ridden hippies camped out in my front yard.'_

_"Secret's safe with me." Danny replied. "So what's on deck today? I forgot to mention that I hate massages and wrestling with supermodels gives me nightmares."_

_Sir chuckled. "I hate to admit it, but I admire your vim and vigor. Keep making the right choices and soon this will all be a vaguely unpleasant memory."_

_"Yes, Sir." Danny shifted in his seat, reassured by the iPhone pressed against his buttocks._

_"I'm afraid today's activities will be dreadfully mundane. We're just going to have a chat. I was going to offer you some food, but since you're trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey I'm afraid I can't." Danny's stomach rumbled, ferociously, and was probably gnawing his liver by now, but he refused to beg for food like an animal, even if the air smelled faintly of cheese and ham sandwiches. "So do you have any questions for me? I'll answer the best I can."_

_"Why'd you take me?"_

_"Ahh, good start. That cycles back to my aforementioned work. I'm paid a disgusting amount of money to—forgive me for being vague—sway people. You are one of many unfortunate pawns on the board."_

_Danny's mind reeled and he wondered who his disappearance could possible influence. The choices were obvious, Steve, of course, but even Danny had made a lot of enemies, as had most of the members of Five-0 and his brother, the embezzling, money-launderer._

_"Are you going to kill me?"_

_Sir's voice dropped an octave. "That remains entirely up to you, although I'd rather not. Killing isn't something I enjoy, turns my stomach."_

_"Yes, it does," Danny replied._

_"Oh, you have taken a life?"_

_"…fourteen," he answered. Isolation had made him desperate for human contact, and Sir's snakeoil charm had only made it that much easier to open up. Danny realized that it was all by design and forced himself to focus. "All in the line-of-duty, not for shits and giggles. No offense."_

_"None taken, Detective. But I'm afraid it's my turn it's my turn at bat."_

_He readied himself for the ultimate deflection. Maybe he'd go all Navy SEAL and receive his name, rank and badge number or maybe he'd play the wall of silence. Danny hadn't quite decided when Sir spoke again. "What's your favorite color?"_

_He sputtered, a little disappointed. "Uh, blue."_

_"Ah, you're a cop, right. That makes sense!" Sir exclaimed. For some reason, Danny imagined him wearing a top hat angled on his head like Mr. Peanut. "Where were you born?"_

_"United States of America."_

_"Choices, Detective, don't forget." Danny heard a repetitive tapping that sounded like a metal pipe against a table._

_"How many siblings do you have?"_

_Danny narrowed his eyes and shook his head. Family was off-limits. "I don't have any. Pretty sure I hatched out of an egg."_

_White sparks glimmered in the darkness of the bag and an instant later, Danny's thigh and eventually his groin danced from white-hot pain so intense he nearly stopped breathing. It lasted for a second, but the muscle was still twitched with anger and the skin began to blister. "Sonuvabitch," he gasped._

_"I know, it's got a nasty bite. Focus now. Your brother is on the lam from the FBI, do you know where he is?"_

_"It'd be pretty hard to tell you the location of a brother I don't have." The pain came again announced by the pint-sized lightning bolts that burned like the big ones that resided in stormclouds._

_"You worked a case with the New Jersey Police Department, regarding the Russian mob. You made dozens of arrests, mostly based on the evidence brought to you by a criminal informant. Who was that said informant?"_

_Sweat beaded on his upper lip and dripped down his neck. It was water her couldn't afford to lose. "I…that was years ago…I don't even remember…" The third shock in his upper arm confirmed that Sir was using a cattle prod, probably a homemade one, because the commercial models had limits on the voltage._

_Like the Wonkian Water Torture, the interrogation lasted for hours and the questions were as widespread at the application of the shocks—from the cases he worked on the mainland and Five-0 to the late governor's illegal dealings to a company named Shelburne to drug cases he'd consulted on with the NYPD to his connections to a dealer named Elijah Roz to his relationship with Joe White. His response: "what can I say? I love an old man in uniform." That answer earned him an extended shock so intense he blacked out._

_The noxious odor of ammonia jerked him out of a pain-free haze. He coughed wetly, mouth filled with a sour, stringy gunk._

_"You passed out, again, Detective, and we're not finished."_

_Danny whimpered, and felt like beef jerky, desiccated and leathery. "Please…don't know what you want…I can't…"_

_At least the consequent jolt to his bad knee truncated his frazzled begging; his feral screeches obliterated what was left of his dignity._

_"A few more well-placed applications and you are going to have a heart attack and you will die. I'm not sure why you're putting yourself through this."_

_"…hard-headed I guess," he gritted out as his muscles twitched._

_But Sir was right, Danny's heart wasn't beating right and his neck muscles trembled so fiercely, he couldn't hold his head up. For once he was grateful for the headbag because it concealed that his eyes were suspiciously wet._

_"How did you did you know CIA analyst Jenna Kaye?"_

_Jenna was a soft-spot for Danny. The woman had saved his life and then five months later double-crossed Steve in Korea only to be killed for her trouble. Like Steve, he had a hard time holding grudges against the dead. He knew what was coming and Danny couldn't be shocked again. He whimpered, shaking his head._

_"I don't know why you're making this so hard, Daniel. This is an easy choice. Just talk to me," Sir cooed._

_"…you…already k-know the answers," he stuttered, "so w-why bother?" It was true. He'd tried lying convincingly, and it hadn't worked._

_"Because I have a job to do."_

_Feeling hands on his body that he couldn't see was a violation Danny wasn't prepared for. His skin crawled as Sir unbuttoned his shirt slowly, finally exposing his skin with a rush of cool air. "Last question and last chance: How did you know CIA analyst Jenna Kaye?"_

_There was no bracing himself for what was coming, so he powered ahead, not giving himself the chance to break. "I married her one drunken night in—oh wait, what happens in Vegas stays in Ve…" he choked on words, head flinging back so hard, it slammed against the back of the chair as Sir stabbed the metal prongs of the cattle prod into bare chest and held it there._

_Danny imagined the electricity traveling through him, igniting kaleidoscopes of pain like an old string of Christmas lights. His body bent like bow, muscles pulled taut. It was excruciating and never-ending, eclipsing that of icy water, isolation, hungry pains and beatings combined. He was literally the living dead, his lungs empty and his heart still, so it was a mercy when the current overloaded his brain and the darkness swallowed him whole._

_He roused again when he landed prone on the dirt floor with unchecked force. He could still feel the cell phone pressed against his lower thigh and that made it all worth it. It should have scared him that he couldn't hear and couldn't move, but it didn't. He imagined Grace playing at Disneyland, the taste of his mother's lasagna, the sound of Gabby's laughter. He'd be free as soon as he could call Steve, who would trace the call and come in guns and grenades blazin'._

_It was another half-day before recovered enough coordination to use the phone he'd swiped, and even then he was so far gone, he could barely focus on the keys, barely lift the phone. The connection was patchy at best and a call wouldn't go through—he'd have to send a text message and try a call in a few hours before doing his best to cover up what he had done. He tapped in Steve's number, hand shaking and vision dimming and brightening like a broken television. Most of the questions had to do with finances and drugs, so Danny could only assume a wronged drug cartel was looking for Matty. Steve wasn't the only one who used Five-0 resources for side projects, Danny had been trying to find Matt since his plane had left the tarmac and kept he kept his meager findings in the wall safe in his apartment. Danny had put letters in there for Grace, incase he'd been killed in the line-of-duty, and entrusted Steve with the duty of delivering them upon his death. He tapped in the combination and hit send, trusting Steve use his mad Navy skills to figure it out. He sent another: "come"_

_His heart ached as he tapped in the last message, just in case no one did: dannno luvs her._

**PRESENT**

Caroline, Danny's second shift nurse, tapped her watch as he approached the nursing station. "Commander, I told you eight hours. And it's hardly been four."

Steve presented her with one of the cups he carried on a drink tray. "I know, we had a deal, but I couldn't sleep. So I figured you'd take a bribe, a caffeinated one."

Caroline had vibrantly red hair, blazing hazel eyes, more tattoos than he did, and somehow managed him like a mom. She took the drink with a begrudging smile. "You're gonna have to do better than coffee, Commander. I like diamonds and cruises, but I won't turn my nose up at a dinner with you."

He leaned over the desk, smacking a kiss on her cheek. "Best I can do."

She focused on her files to conceal the fact that she was blushing. "I'll let you off this time." She shrugged. As Steve backed away, she grabbed his arm. "But if see you here before noon tomorrow, you're gonna have to do more than pucker up."

Steve held his free hand up in surrender. "Don't worry, Caroline, you won't see me." With a wink, he ambled around the corner and into Danny's room.

Even Steve could appreciate the irony that after ten days of residing in an induced coma, Danny had woken up, fighting the vent, when Steve ducked out of the hospital for a nap, so now he only left when the nurses forced him too, and even then he rarely left the hospital proper. Savannah let him nap in the on-call room if she was on-duty and he showered at headquarters, which was far closer to the hospital than his house.

Danny's injuries were extensive, but his physical health was improving faster than his doctors' cautious prognosis. Mentally, he was still traumatized. But Steve understood.

He waved to Kono setting the remaining two coffees on the small table beside her. He stood next to Danny's bed, laying a light hand on his shoulder as a silent greeting as he didn't want to disturb Grace, who was sitting on the bed, confidently reading a chapter from "Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets."

Normally, Grace commanded Danny's full attention, but times were anything but normal. It was heartbreaking to watch as Danny ignored her, gazing listlessly at nothing as she read aloud, adding her own voices and theatrics. When Grace finished in a flourish, she smiled brightly. "Daddy, do you want to me to hear another one?" She asked, eyes glittering.

Danny blinked.

Grace leaned closer. "Daddy, did you hear me? Mommy said your head hurt, so I don't have to do another one, but I can if you want. I can whisper."

Kono stepped forward and put a hand on Grace's shoulder. "Remember how your mom and Dr. Jensen said that Danno was a little…confused from his car accident and really tired from sleeping for so long?" The child nodded. "That's why he's not answering you right now. He's not fully awake yet. I really liked that chapter though. Maybe you can read him another one a little later."

Grace nodded, but Steve could see that she was upset as she quietly tucked her book away and looked at her father again. She didn't say anything but scooted closer to him on the bed, and put a hand on his chest. "I miss you, Danno. I miss it when you tell me stories and call me Monkey. I'm still your Monkey, right? Danno?"

Danny closed his bruised eyes, shutting her out completely.

Steve's heart broke at the fat tears that fell from Grace's big brown eyes. He walked around the bed and motioned for her to get on his back. Grace obliged and he left the room, hopping down the hall until she laughed. In the cafeteria, he bought her whatever he wanted, ignoring Danny's strict rules about her diet. She ended up with a giant plate of tater tots and chocolate milk. "Grace, I know this is scary, but Danno's going to be all right. You just need to be patient like when you have to wait for Christmas."

"This is worse, Uncle Steve. He always makes me laugh when I'm sick, like he walks into walls and tells me jokes. One time, he sang me Disney songs. It's my turn and it's not working, and I think he scared. He's only quiet when he's scared."

Steve marveled at the love between father and daughter. Grace was too young to know the truth about what had happened to her father, but somehow she'd discerned Danny's fear and wanted to fix it. He smiled again and reached across the table to tug on her long braid. "You are helping. He's not showing it right now, but you visiting him every day helps more than the medicine does."

"He did look better today," Grace admitted.

"That's right, and tomorrow, he'll look even better."

Grace grinned and popped a tater tot in her mouth. "Danno said I'm not supposed to eat these. I'm going to tell him when we get back to the room. Maybe he'll get mad. I miss it when he gets mad."

Steve sighed. "Me too."

"Really? He gets mad at you a lot."

Steve laughed, probably for the first time in weeks. He relished it and didn't apologize. "Yeah, Gracie, he does."

Steve watched as Danny's friends, doctors, police officers and psychiatrists cycled into the room, prompting and prodding Danny to reassure them tell them about his pain, describe the men who took him, open up about his ordeal as they had for the past four days, shoving keys in doors Danny wasn't ready to open. By evening, even Steve was anxiety-ridden, and Danny was visibly frazzled, trying to turn away on his right side and gripping the protective railing of the bed so hard, his knuckles flashed white, even the exposed, bloated toes of his casted leg were curled with stress. When the attending psychiatrist invaded Danny's space without so much as an introduction, Steve snapped.

"Leave him alone," he warned, low and lethal. "The last thing Danny needs another person badgering him to talk."

The doctor, a man with offensive comb-over and blue Hawaiian shirt, startled at his tone. "I assure you, mister, that I'm just working in the best interest of the patient. I need to make sure that he's not a threat to himself or others or that he has decompensated mentally. If you don't like my methods, you are free to go."

Steve advanced on the man, standing in front of Danny's hospital bed and backing him up. "If we're making introductions, my name is Lieutenant Commander Steven McGarrett, _Doctor…_Thomas," he said, plucking the name off the doctor's ID badge. "And a threat to himself? He can't even sit up right now and he's never alone. He's not a threat to himself, he's hurting and tired and sick of people badgering him," Steven sneered.

Dr. Thomas adjusted his glasses and huffed. "I'm sure he is, but unless you have training in such matters…"

Steve silenced him with a raised hand. "Have you ever been held hostage?"

He fumbled, "Of course not."

"Have you ever been tortured?"

"No." His tone was more serious, than affronted.

"Have you ever had a gun pointed at your head? Been beaten? Starved?"

"No."

"Then you have no business telling Danny how he should deal with it. He'll talk when he's ready."

"But…"

"_Get the fuck out_."

The doctor stood his ground. And Steve saw red. He put his hands on his hips, purposely nudging his holstered weapon. "Unless you want to be able to answer 'yes' to one of those questions in about three seconds, you will get out of my sight…and you will leave him alone until he _asks_ for you."

Dr. Thomas blanched and backed out of the room. "Maybe you need to see a psychiatrist, Commander."

Steve paced the length of the narrow room, trying to work off the tension. He stopped at Danny's bed and patted his forearm. "I got your back, partner."

He was thrilled when Danny, who'd dissociated so badly that he hadn't spoken and responded to anyone in four days, shifted his eyes to Steve's, expressing everything in one heartbreaking glimmer of eyes than could ever be conveyed with words.


	6. Beautiful Nightmare

Thanks for all of the reviews. I will respond ASAP. It's just been a stressful few days for this unemployed loser. Here's the next chapter**. **I'm borrowing Steve's bulletproof vest after posting this one.I think I might need it.**  
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><p><strong>Chapter 6 – Beautiful Nightmare<strong>

_**Hour 42**_

_When the guards stalked into his cage in the middle of the night with uncharacteristic bluster and a work lamp, Danny knew with crushing that they'd knew what he had done even though he'd dumped the phone just after sunset by digging another trench by the door and flung it as far away from his cage as he could. He'd never been able to make a call._

_No one was coming._

_Sir powered into the room, a leather leash wrapped around his hands. Danny's wide eyes followed the unspooling leather and saw that it was attached to one of the masked guards. His hands were cuffed behind him, guard-turned-prisoner._

_"What did I tell you about making smart choices, Detective?" Anger made Sir downright terrifying, that altered face of his taking on unnatural angles, spittle flying from those puffed lips. Danny realized with disgust that the starched refined charisma wasn't his default setting, rage was._

_Trapped, Danny played the only card he could—denial. "I…I have been."_

_"There are few things I despise, and one of them is dishonesty. I will give you one chance to tell the truth, to make the right choice." He lifted the iPhone into the air. "Did you have this in your possession?"_

_Danny opened his mouth, the lie perched on his tongue. Sir crossed the room, towing the guard with him, and crouched down until they were nearly nose to nose. His hushed tone was unmistakably lethal. "Before you answer, I must remind you that I am painstakingly thorough in my preparations. One could assume that I know about your lovers, your friends, your children, biological and surrogate."_

_God help me, Danny prayed. Hearting pounding, Danny closed his mouth with an audible click of teeth._

_"Detective," he began again, "did you have this phone in your possession?"_

_He always said he'd die for Grace, and there was no time like the present. Danny met his eyes. "Yes."_

_"I gave you ample warnings, did I not?" Sir ranted, pacing in front of him with his arms clasped behind his back._

_Danny sputtered, "I'm—I'm sorry."_

_"And to think you were nearly home free," Sir tsked. "You should know better than anyone that when people break the rules, they get punished."_

_A chill streaked down his spine and settled uncomfortably in his empty stomach. He'd maintained a baseline of tense, barely controlled panic since his abduction, and now it careening towards ominous terror._

_A guard hung the light on a pipe that ran across the ceiling. "I know a lot about you, but what always stood out to me is that you are a very self-sacrificing man and fiercely protective. You received a medal from the mayor of Hoboken for running into a burning building with no protective gear to save two children and the family dog. You pulled shifts for the NYPD after 9/11. You'd rather risk death than besmirch the reputation of a dead woman."_

_He grabbed the leash of the muscular masked man in a sleeveless shirt, cargo shorts and with arms covered in the black sketch-work of half-finished tribal tattoos, and yanked, forcing him to his knees. Sir whisked off the mask, revealing the puffed, beaten face of a Korean boy, probably no older than eighteen, he had the thick side-swept hair that most teenage boys wore now, and it dipped into his eyes as he begged or prayed in Korean. The twines of a canine prong collar gouged bloodied ruts in his neck._

_"This is Patrick. He allowed his phone to be taken. I'm sure a bleeding heart such as yourself would connect to his story. He's a kid who grew up in the homeless beach in Waianae. The hand he was dealt all but forced him into a life of crime. A job as a courier led him to me. His wage for one of my projects probably would have given him enough money to secure a home for his family. A better life."_

_Danny looked at him, unable to connect that young weeping face with faceless beast that facilitated his torture._

_"I didn't call anyone; I couldn't even get a signal," he said. It was the truth._

_Sir continued as if he hadn't spoken. "Patrick knew upon when his hiring that the smallest infraction would be cause for termination."_

_Patrick whimpered, shaking his head._

_Sir tossed a blade, a freakin' machete, at Danny's feet. "So, you, the kind-hearted, do-gooding servant of the law, are going to do it. Terminate him."_

_Danny vibrated with rage so severe, bile rose in his throat. He wasn't killing some thug-in-training because of the arbitrary rules set by a cracked-out terrorist._

_"Pick up the blade, Detective!"_

_The past days had taught him a million lessons about suffering and challenged his limits as a person. As a cop and a human being, Danny knew the line had to be drawn somewhere, that some principals were more important than one man and one life. Danny had made his decision. Even though he wouldn't mind knocking a few of Patrick's teeth out and letting him roast in this wretched box for a day, he physically couldn't murder another person, especially not a teenager with haunted by eyes and the hair of a teenaged heartthrob. "I'm not…Kid, I can't."_

_Relief colored his tear-stained face and Patrick dropped his head, awaiting whatever was to come. Danny regarded his crazed captor with conviction. "_

_"Perhaps you'd feel more comfortable with the gun." As Sir tossed the gun at Danny's feet, the guards pulled theirs._

_Sir crossed the room, fury coloring his every move. He stood too close to him, lips pressed to Danny's ear. The warmth of his breath, the wet spray of his spittle was repulsing. "Pick up the gun, detective. You have run out of time."_

_"No."_

_The mild-mannered Sir vanished transformed into something wicked and wild. He pounded Danny in the face, brass knuckles splitting the skin between his eyebrows. Blood dripped into his eyes. Danny stumbled back, and caught himself on the wall. Danny met his eyes, unyielding._

_Sir lashed out again, smashing him in the face so hard that his head slammed back, cracking into the wall. And he slid down the wall, landing on his bottom, legs crumpled beneath him, dazed and near unconsciousness. He kicked him, stomping on his chest with his heavy-heeled boots. "Are you going to do it, Detective?"_

_Danny rolled on the floor, trying to escape the distress of being unable to breathe. He shook his head fervently._

_The ensuing horror doubled as the business of a bat arcing down in the air; Danny felt its wind on his face and heard the splintering crack of a crunching bone. The ensuing was pain was grisly, tearing through his leg and shoot up into his pelvis. Danny hollered, clutching the battered leg as if he could hold it together. It came down again, and managed to shimmy a few inches to the right. Even a glancing blow felt as if his chest had been crushed. He gagged into the sand, sick from the nerve-shearing misery. And he was unable to scream, could only puff out profanity in a gritty bark._

_"Since you obviously don't care about yourself, maybe it's time to bring others into the mix. I wonder how fast your little ball of Grace would be tarnished in a place like this?"_

_The gun was in his hand before Danny could even comprehend moving. He mewed pathetically as Sir hauled him to his feet, holding him up as Danny pulled the slide back, gun trained on Patrick. His vision was stained a blurry blood red, and he was pretty sure his ribs were broken. He didn't even have to guess about his leg. He held it off the ground, hopping and swaying until Sir squeezed him tighter, propping him up and cooing murderously in her ear._

_It all escalated in the span of a few seconds. The air was charged with an ominous finality as masked guards hollered and jeered, commanding him to kill, to murder. Patrick cried, rocking back and forth._

_He surrendered to the selfish need to survive that had kept him going all this time. It took less of him than Danny expected, a small flick of the finger against the trigger, a shifting of the thin blue line. The deafening pop of gunfire popped in the small cage, and through glow of muzzle-flash, Patrick tumbled backward and flopped on his side. By the time he landed, his shirt was a blackish-red. One bullet had punched a hole through the kid's chest, and pinged against the metal of the wall. Another had hit him in the gut._

_Collapsing in the dirt, Danny wept so hard he lost time. The next thing he knew, another guard had chained to a bar on the wall that his cage had never been bright enough for him to see, an honest-to-God manacle on one wrist. Danny was left alone with Patrick, crumpled on the ground a few feet away, making strangled noises. With his arms bound behind him, he couldn't put pressure on the ugly wounds, he could only lurch on floor like an octopus' tentacle. He needed to help. But when Danny tried to move, the pain became unbearable, doubling and tripling._

_Determined, he sank his hands into the dirt and crept across the floor in an arduous shuffle, not bothering to conceal the groans of pain as he jostled his undoubtedly broken leg or his battered ribs. A few inches away from Patrick, the chain snapped taut. He stretched as far as he could, fingers ghosted over Patrick's jeans._

_"Hey, kid, over here!" It took long minutes for the kid to focus enough to turn his head towards Danny. "You need to close the gap. Scoot to me."_

_When Patrick tried to talk, blood dribbled out of the corner of his mouth._

_"I know, it hurts, kid, I know, but you can do it."_

_His spindly legs twitched, scrabbling in the dirt before he planted his feet. He pushed, shifting marginally in the dirt. Tears rose in Danny's eyes at Patrick's visceral howls of pain, at the bloody trail he left in the dirt. As soon as he was within reach, Danny towed the kid onto his lap, bad leg turned towards the wall. There wasn't a cloth to use to hold pressure, so he pressed his hand against the messy holes, pushing down with unsympathetic pressure, but even then Danny knew there was nothing he could do. Patrick hollered—long gurgling screams that made Danny wish he'd turned the gun on Sir instead. He spoke in Korean as fast as he could, even as his eyes unfocused, but the gravity translated even if the words didn't. Whatever he was saying was important, but Danny didn't understand a word._

_"I'm so sorry. I'm sorry." Danny cried. "Just hang on, okay. It'll get better. And it won't hurt anymore."_

_It was only a few moments until he was too far gone to do anything but choke for breath and trying to breath around the blood that fissured up and the holes in his lungs. His death wasn't fast or merciful, but prolonged and gruesome. And all Danny could do was apologize and ask for forgiveness. With his arms bound behind him, he couldn't even hold his hand._

_Patrick died with his eyes open and an expression of absolute terror on his face. Death clung to his skin and hovered in the air like an inescapable promise. With a lurch, he shoved the corpse away from him, wiped bloody hands on Patrick's loose t-shirt. When the light flickered and died, Danny banged on the walls with his fist, tugging on the chain. "Get him out of him! GET HIM OUT!"_

_No one came._

_The heat rose again. It was the amalgam of every waking nightmare he ever had when the bugs found Patrick's body moldering on the floor. Danny was living it, breathing it in, steeped in phobia and terrors._

_And somehow, he wasn't there anymore, detached from the skittering of mice and the buzzing of flies, the noxious stench of a body bloated by the heat. Pressed against the wall of the cage-turned-coffin, his entrenched instinct to fight disappeared; his white-knuckled grip on survival severed as Danny's spirit broke._

**PRESENT DAY  
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Steve ran like a man on fire.

Heart pounding, adrenaline crackling as he gleefully chased the fleeing suspect through the car dealership he used to launder his drug money. Steve McGarrett was never a spiritual person. He'd often toss out prayers, like wishes, but after a decade of ever-changing battlefields and the traumas of his childhood, he'd pretty much believed people were on their own.

But as he had put on his favorite ballistic vest and thigh-holster, sheathed his knife, loaded in his guns and stowed away the extra magazines, he had found himself truly praying that Elijah Roz would be stupid enough to run, thus granting Steve the authority to take him down with as much force as he needed.

The sight of a thoroughly armed, slightly crazed police office stroller through the lobby of his luxury car dealership (that was too close to Stan and Rachel's sprawling home) was enough to terrify Elijah Roz—a known drug leader and the only suspect in Danny's disappearance—and he fled, pushing down patrons and knocking over chairs.

Prayers answered, Steve gleefully made chase out of the dealership and through the lot. Roz thought weaving through the rows of pristine cars would make him harder to catch, but Steve was a tiger locked on his prey. He leapt from the ground and up the hood of a neon green Lexus and across three more and then back to the ground as he reached the end of the row. Steve reached out as Roz streaked passed him but the collar of his shirt brushed under his fingertips before just out of reach. Snarling, Steve pressed on, ducking between cars and closing the gap. At the last second, he turned away to sprint through rows of black Porches. As he expected, Roz cut to the left and right into his clutches. Using Roz's own momentum against him, he grabbed him by the shirt lifted him off his feet and spun, slammed him down against the windshield of a BMW better than any wrestler's piledriver. The glass cracked with a loud twinkle, spiderwebbing impressively.

Roz groaned and arched and swore from the pain.

Steve flipped him on his stomach to cuff him. He clapped the groaning Roz on the shoulder. "Man, I gotta start goin' to church."

Chin and Kono ran through the gawkers clapping sporting amused grins. "Great takedown, boss."

Chin heaved the suspect off the car and rolled his eyes when his legs wouldn't hold him. He let him drop to the sun-baked cement.

With Danny awake and finally out of ICU, Steve was able to focus his case. Somehow Danny had been able to send texts to Steve's cell while in captivity. The first had been nothing but numbers that lead Steve to the safe in Danny's new apartment where he'd had files on the investigation of his missing brother (the last was a chilling "danno lovs her"). The evidence against this drug dealer for using Matty to launder money through businesses and investing firms was sparse, but like Danny, it was methodical and solid.

Chin squatted in front of a winded Roz, resting his shotgun across his knees. "Do you know a Detective Williams?"

Roz's sweaty hair fell in his face and blew out a harsh breath he gritted out. "Doesn't ring a bell." His earlobe bled freely from the stud that had been ripped out.

Steve cuffed Roz on the back of the head. "I can ring this bell all day, Roz. Detective Danny Williams, he was here a month ago and spoke with you about his brother, Matthew Williams."

"Oh the little guy with the big ass attitude?" He chuckled. "Yeah, I know 'im. I liked that cat, man."

"Did you_ like_ him enough to have him abducted?"

Roz's smug expression plummeted. "Why would I waste my time? He was a cop with a hunch. I got no reason to be scared of him. He was just lookin' after his people, and I respect that. I gotta mom with who likes the slots a little too much."

Steve grabbed Roz's hair and yanked him sideways so he was flush against the hot pavement. He loomed over him, murder in his eyes. "He's my partner," Steve snarled, "and that gives you reason to be scared of me."

But Roz was scared. He gulped, body shaking with denial and oddly, bravado. "I don't snatch people, least of all cops. Especially cops tied to you, Rambo! I'm a businessman, not a murderer. I been here every day for the past three weeks. Now, I want my lawyer." He demanded.

Steve wrapped a hand around Roz's throat and relished when he panicked, screaming like an angry child. "I WANT A LAWYER! Everybody, you hear that! I'M ASKING FOR MY LAWYER. I GOT RIGHTS! You with the Samsung Droid, you gettin' this? My constitutional rights are being pulverized, like my physical person!"

"You want me to call you mother, you whiny little bitch?" Kono said, pulling up by the collar.

"You leave my mother out of this, bitch!"

"Kono, take him to HPD headquarters. Make sure he's greeted properly in holding 'til his lawyer arrives." Chin advised.

"Gladly, come on, mama's boy."

"Odds are he's going to have an alibi tighter than a wetsuit. Roz is an idiot, but he's not stupid." Chin grimaced. "We can't get him on Danny's abduction, but we got him on obstruction of justice and with Danny's files we might be able to get a warrant to search the dealership, maybe we'll find something to charge him with."

"Back to square one. Fuck." Steve unstrapped his vest, dizzy from the pursuit and livid from the death of their only lead. Roz peddled cocaine and ecstasy to entitled college kids and hard partiers, but he'd never had the stomach for torture or even murder. He knew the lead had been a weak one, but he still felt defeated. "I'll see you at the hospital in a few hours."

The thought of facing Danny without making any progress in his investigation made him physically ill, so he did his best not to think as he showered, checked his emails and headed back to the hospital with a stack of work from Five-0. Danny's abduction left Steve quietly distraught. He played with Grace, flirted with the nurses, and was a leader for his team, but as soon as he was alone, the rage and panic descended like an opportunistic fog, leaving him befuddled and lost, unable to sleep or eat more than a few bites of food. The Navy had never taught him how to cope with the scars of traumas, how to pick up the pieces from the bombs he detonated or heal from the bullets he'd fired. Steve had never been helpless, and steeping in it for the past two weeks.

He took the stairs to eighth floor and used his stealth training to avoid Nurse Caroline and entered Danny's room, offering him a poor facsimile of a smile. Thanks to a team of doctors and Danny's own tenacity, he'd had regained a bit of weight, and it had softened the hard planes of his once gaunt face. He was still tethered to the bed with tubes and monitors and catheters and his face was still a rainbow of hues, eyes raccooned by his nasty concussion, but Danny sat upright, watching television, casted leg resting on pillows.

When he noticed Steve, Danny shifted in the bed, trying to sit up straighter in the elevated bed. "No need to get up, _brah_, relax. How're you feeling?"

Danny flicked him off with the arm that wasn't heavily bandaged and splinted.

Steve laughed, grateful that Danny was responding. "When was the last time you spoke? You remember our deal, right? I keep the head shrinkers away if you speak once an hour."

"…you look like…shit, deep-fried."

Steve's smile was real this time. "Have you looked in a mirror lately?"

"…fucked up my hair."

He sat down in the chair beside Danny's bed. "I think it's an improvement, actually."

"Work?"

Steve averted his eyes and cracked his knuckles, not wanting to answer. "We're focusing on wrapping up our current cases right now. Obviously, yours is the biggest one. I hate to say this, but we're…not making much headway."

He may have imagined it but for the briefest of moments, Danny actually seemed relieved, but the expression faded as quickly as it came.

"Kick it to the FBI." Danny suggested.

Steve clutched his heart. "Oh ye of little faith. I'm not giving up, Danno."

Danny's teeth sank into his lower lip as his face creased with pain. Steve searched the nightstand, handing him the rainbow-fringed stress ball Grace had bought him and tucked it in his good hand, knowing Danny wouldn't use the pain pump. "Squeeze and breathe, dude."

He obliged, gripping and releasing the squishy ball. "…this sucks," he mumbled before his eyes fluttered shut.

It had only been a little more than a week since Danny had woken up, and Steve was impressed with how far he'd come.

Steve lowered the bed a few degrees and focused on his stack of cases awaiting his final approval. With Danny out, the governor had all but stopped the flow of cases to Five-0, Steve understood, but he had never been built to sit still and push papers. He was already restless, knee bouncing as he read and signed off on closed cases. The fact that Danny's kidnapper still breathed fresh air—still breathed at all—only intensified his anxiety.

"They kept me in a metal shed," Danny uttered in his almost inaudible whisper, "no light…no w-water." Danny licked his crackled lips. "I baked like b-brownies."

Steve's froze, heart racing. Danny's neurologist hypothesized that due to the severity of Danny's concussion, he wouldn't remember most of his ordeal, and Steve had prayed he was right.

"Danny…"

"…they broke…me," he confessed. "I…was ready to die."

"No, they didn't. They tried their best and they still couldn't do it. You're still here, man." He slipped the stress ball out of Danny's hand, and offered his own.

"Feels like I'm still there. I…can still smell it, taste it."

"I know. I know that every sound or smell brings you back there, but you're not. I'm going to find them and burn their fuckin' house down. When you're ready, you can help."

Danny's grip grew weaker and the creases in his face from pain deepened. "…can I strike…first match?"

"I'm freakin' insulted. Matches? Who do you think I am? I ordered napalm."

After Danny fell asleep, Steve braced himself over the edge of the bed, head in his hands, eyes suspiciously wet. He couldn't handle this, not at all. Steve was overjoyed to have Danny back, and during those frightening days when he was gone, Steve thought that having him back would magically fix the days of 'what ifs' and dread and powerlessness. But it had only raised new questions, dredged up old grief and Steve still lived in constant fear of it happening again.

Steve had been a prisoner of war for three monstrous days. The torture he endured there had made his stint in North Korea seem like a day at the spa in comparison. It was a hell he'd never wish on anyone, least of all his best friend. He'd never spoke of what he'd survived, but it was all there in the deadness of Danny's eyes, the colors of his bruises, the brittle sounds of pain. Steve braced his head in his arms and rewarded with himself with a minute to break down, to cry off the worst of the pressure, so he could breath again. Steve had mastered the art of crying covertly, so he did. The only clue was his shuttered breaths and red eyes.

The constant beep of his heart monitor ramped up to a frenetic trill. Steve flew to his feet, hovering as Danny clutched his chest, mouth gaping like a dying fish, eyes rolling back. Doctors and nurses whisked into the room, barking orders and boxing him out.

It all happened so fast, Danny's skin flushing blue and a weeping Savannah calling time of death. The funeral with a folded flag and a 21-gun salute and a strung-out Mary.

An icy hand patted his face, startling him. A feeble nudge of his shoulder made him frown.

"S-steve…come on, Steve, wake up…"

His eyes flared open and he popped straight up from where he'd been pillowed on Danny's hospital bed. He saw his partner, alive and whole, shoulders crested off the back of the pillow, bad arm pressed to his battered ribs. "You were…nightmare?"

He nodded, mortified.

"Thanks for…heart attack. As if I don't have enough…problems."

Steve cursed, dropped his head against the mattress, only then did he realize how exhausted he was, how t his t-shirt damp with sweat, how the room spun madly. "I'm sorry. I can't…been a crazy few weeks, huh?"

"Pretty normal for us, babe." Danny's hand curved over his forehead. "You've got…a fever."

He ignored him. "Shit, I'm sorry. Do you need a nurse? Do your ribs hurt?" He stood up and helped Danny ease back, arranging the pillows under his head and tucking the nasal cannula behind his ear. His eyes flickered the heart monitor and he sought reassurance in its resolute rhythm.

"More worried about you…now."

"I wouldn't be here if I was sick, Danny. I'm fine. I'm gonna go get the doctor, so she can check you out. You're not supposed to be moving. You broke you liver, remember?"

"Broke everything," Danny grumbled. "And you're not. You're…exhausted. Go rest. In a bed."

Steve scrubbed a hand over his face, frazzled, saddled with the constant worry that Danny would be taken again or that the doctors had missed something and he'd return to the hospital to a stripped mattress and a fatherless Grace. He'd failed to protect his partner and now he could only relax when his partner was in arms reach. He sat down again, eyes watering.

"Your turn," he whispered, and then added more urgently, "talk, Steven."

_Steven._ That irksome little habit that was so completely Danny broke him or released him from pretending he was okay. He had to put on a brave face for his team and for Gabby and Grace, but somehow Danny always knew when he was too close to the edge and too stubborn to asked for a hand. "I thought I'd never hear that again… I'm one of the best soldiers in the world and I couldn't even _find _you. They took you and I couldn't do anything about it. The case is cold…and I don't know what to do."

Danny shrugged with one shoulder. "I know…what you can do—drop it."

Steve looked at him as if he'd grown two heads. It took him a minute to overcome the shock. "Are you, the most stubborn person I've ever met in my life, seriously asking me to let this go?"

"Not asking. _Telling_. Leave it alone. Let the FBI handle it."

"That has to be the concussion talking because there's no way I'd ever let this go. I'll chase that motherfucker to the end of the world if I have to. Danny, no one gets to do this to people and get away with it, especially people I love. They took you and I didn't know where you were or what was happened to you? Do you know what that feels like?"

Danny pinned him with his bloodshot, swollen eyes. "_North Korea_." He hissed. "…feels like your worst nightmare. The last thing you need…on your plate is another vendetta. So, I'm beggin' you…let this go, babe."

"Yeah, you definitely need your head checked again," he muttered. But Danny had already fallen asleep. He watched him for awhile, wondering how he was coping so well being stuck in the bed, so injured he was barely allowed to move.

Steve wasn't going to argue with Danny when he was still so raw. He left the room, asking the night nurse to check on him, and went in the opposite direction in need of air. By now, he knew the hospital layout inside and out and let his feet carry him to the open-air courtyard that was populated with lush gardens and a soothing fountain. He paced the smooth walkway, mind crackling with useless thoughts, determination swelling more than it ever had. If Danny thought Steve was the type of person who'd just let crimes against his _ohana _go unpunished, he didn't know him at all. He'd captured the men who killed his mother and father. He'd personally dispatched the thugs who took his sister. And he had Wo Fat running scared. Steve McGarrett always got his man, and this case would be no different.

And then it dawned on him: Danny was hiding something.


	7. Blame It On The Pain

Again, I'm blown away by the feedback. It's been so wonderful. This chapter is really long, and the next will more than likely be the last. Please let me know what you think.**  
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><p><strong>Chapter 7 – Blame It On The Pain<strong>

_**Hour 19**_

_The faint aroma of coffee kick-started his mind that had been stagnant and foggy, humming like a frozen computer. It had been Danny's sixth coffee date with Gabby, and his cup of black Hawaiian Kona was flooded with milk and sugar, just the way he liked it. They sat on her lanai, barefoot and giggling like teenagers. Beyond the potted hibiscus plants that bookended her narrow porch at the turquoise water and the pastel-dappled sky above and the mountains to the right. But Danny only noticed her, sipping her own cup, chestnut hair billowing in the wind. It was then that Danny realized that loving her would be effortless and uncomplicated. With Rachel it had always taken work to make and keep her happy, and no matter how hard he tried, he never felt worthy of her._

_The connection with Gabby felt as if it had always been there, a diamond waiting to be mined. He'd thought the divorce and custody battle had irrevocably scarred the part of him capable of love and passion for anything other than his daughter and the law, and he had never been so glad to be wrong. He leaned forward, kissing Gabby luridly, pushing her back against the painted boards of the lanai. She tasted like coffee and chocolate and flowery perfume. She hitched beneath him, awkwardly shimmying her pencil skirt up so she could wrap his legs around him. She shucked off his shirt, kissing Danny's chest and biting his nipple until Danny shuddered, laughing. With Gabby, he was always laughing._

_It was moments like that—leisurely sex on the lanai, two a.m. dates for coffee, or walks along the ocean that turned into full-blown wrestling matches—that made Danny feel alive again, re-born, and capable of love._

_It was that moment, coffee in the air, that nudged him back to conscious thought and out of the dead, disassociated haze._

_The first thing he noticed is that the putrid stink of death was gone, and the door to his swung lazily in the wind ajar._

_The second thing he noticed was Sir sitting on the floor next to him holding a lantern that illuminated the shadows, staring at him as he was slumped sideways against the too-hot wall of the shack._

_Danny had reached his capacity on fear, and was no longer affected by Sir's presence, but he was grateful that pain no longer registered. He wasn't even thirsty anymore._

_Sir glanced at Danny, an over-gelled stripe of hair hanging in his face. "You're back. I thought I was going to be doing some digging, Detective. Thank you for sparing me the work."_

_Danny closed his eyes and thus shut him out. He felt the grit of dirt and blood and the crawl of curious ants roaming over his skin._

_"What, no snappy comebacks? Have I finally broken the unbreakable? I guess we'll find out." Sir mocked. "You've made some pretty asinine choices as of late, Detective. But now it's time for you to make the ultimate one," He began as if he was auditioning to host some epic game show. "Everything you've done since you got here leads me to believe that you have a death-wish, so now you have to choose."_

_His fingers twitched because the thick chains and manacles had been traded for zipties threaded around the bar, eliminating his ability to move. He couldn't even summon the energy to care why. Behind closed lids, he saw the muzzle flash, Patrick's dead eyes, his rotting corpse. Sir blathered on, but the battered detective could only wonder if it would be better to go now and not drag it out. Danny wasn't sure that the world still existed beyond a shack made of corrugated metal, barbed wire and concrete. If it did, Danny wasn't sure he'd know how to function in it. Not screaming felt like an impossible feat, thus overcoming this misery felt bigger than that._

_Danny felt the slicing of the tender skin of his right arm and an alarming internal snick like the cutting of kitchen twine. It was the wet warmth and the charging buzz of endorphins that gave him the strength to lift his eyes._

_Sir's gloved hands held a blood-laced filet knife. And his arm bled steadily from a nearly surgical slash of the inside of his upper arm, where the flesh was still soft and white and clean. The blood that spurted out was a bright arterial red._

_Sir had purposely went for the artery._

_"Fuck," he swore, twisting his hands, trying to get free. The shock wore off, and the pain in its wake was searing._

_He was so sick of pain._

_Sir sat crossed-legged in front of him, watching with depraved fascination as Danny struggled even more. His heart started to thump terribly. His head began to spin. The blood puddled beneath him. There was nothing he could do. He was going to bleed to death._

_After all of that he endured, maybe this wasn't the worst way to go. Danny stopped, half-hearted fight vanishing as quickly as it came. He watched his life drain away with a morbid curiosity of his own, like sand in an hourglass. Danny's time was almost up._

_It had always bothered him when his body acted without his control, but this time it didn't bother him when his skin bristled with cold and he grew incredibly nauseous. There was no choice but to endure it._

_A few minutes later, Danny's head wobbled, leadened and too light at the same time. His body, already hollow from malnutrition, shook, arousing dulled pain everywhere else. He should've known it wouldn't be that simple. There was no way to gently slide into the void. He thumped his head against the wall, groaning when gravity worked on his upper body, too, and he fell back with a startling snap. The wound tore, throbbing of the bone, as arms locked straight, pulled taut in the zipties._

_Through it all, Sir just watched._

_He couldn't scream, couldn't think, could only gasp for air. His heart was beating so fast, it felt like a small engine whirring in his chest. His vision feathered at the edges, darkness invading. When the shivering racheted up to an impressive violence, Sir scooped up his hanging head with his gloved hands. The flicker of flames nearby hurt his rolling eyes. "Life or death, Daniel?"_

_His heart lurched in his chest, running out of fuel. Blood soaked his shirt, dripping down his side, and this time it wasn't Patrick's. Danny knew it he didn't have time. He couldn't speak, but he'd chosen, so he didn't have to. And his vision began to dim…_

_The wind picked up, sweet but freezing on his clammy skin, and there was the lilt of coffee, the thrill of newfound love. He'd never know where he got the strength to grit out, "…life…"_

_Danny flopped to the ground when Sir cut the zipties. It was silent for a moment until Danny smelled hot metal, like that of his grandparents' fireplace. He only needed to see a flash of molten iron and he knew what was going to happen. "Oh, god," was all he was able to gasp before the iron hit his skin, sizzling._

_It was probably a mercy that he never had time to brace for the pain. It hit like a meteor with a flash and an impact that rippled through his entire body. Throwing his head back, his mouth opened in a soundless scream as the fire engulfed his entire arm. If he trembled before, but he downright convulsed now. Hands slapping the dirt, feet kicking out in a mindless scrabble to escape the white-hot agony. The smell of his own burning flesh clogging his nostrils, and Danny passed out, regretting his choice._

_Color came in sporadic flashes punctuating the black. A masked face, with familiar eyes hovered above him, pushing something into his mouth. The inclination to suck was innate and liquid, sweet and cool, flooded his mouth. And Danny nearly wept._

_There was no solace offered even as the guard held his head up, patiently letting him drink his fill._

_The liquid sloshed in his stomach for a few seconds before rocketing back up. He was turned on his left side as he vomited, too far gone. Undeterred, the guard hacked his clothes off with a knife. Danny wasn't sad to see them go, even if that meant remaining sprawled in the dirt, naked in every sense. The dress pants and shirt were tattered and filthy, stiff with his blood and bile, sweat and tears._

_The jostling had amped up pain that was more insidious than Sir ever could be, shredding his nerves. Killing him._

_Through blurred vision, Danny saw his torso dappled in light, and the distended black bruising that spoke of internal injuries. It won't be long now, he thought._

_The guard knelt, and prepped a hypodermic with a practiced hands. The tourniquet tightened around his left arm and Danny tried to ask what he was being given. His words sounded like slurred whispers, without volume._

_"Heroin," the guard answered, speaking for the first time. Danny hoped he wasn't forced to kill him, too. "For the pain."_

_He probably should have been declined or been worried about having hardcore illegal drugs in his system—Danny rarely ingested anything stronger than Chin's vicious margaritas—but he was hurting too much to care, his mangled, burned arm throbbing in unison with his heartbeat._

_"Patrick was a just kid." The guard announced as tried to find a vein._

_Danny wasn't sure if the heroin was a punishment for killing Patrick or a reward for trying not to._

_The drugs were injected and the effect was immediate. The opiates not only took the edge off the pain, they destroyed it. Danny's head cleared, body strumming from the reprieve. He starred up at the darkness above him—stars, galaxies, and the entire universe hovering above like an awesome celestial mobile._

_And instead of slipping into darkness, a bizarre euphoria spirited him away._

**PRESENT**

Hawaii had a palpable spirit that Steve never felt anywhere else. He felt it in the land and the water, whispering in the trees. On the morning he'd left to pick up Danny, after almost a month in the hospital, Steve wasn't surprised by how beautiful the day was, like the island was celebrating too.

When Danny asked if they could see the ocean on the way home, Steve obliged, driving his car illegally onto the beach. It took a while to get Danny out of the car and onto the sand, but for what for the first time in a six weeks, he wasn't in a hurry or working off blinding panic.

Danny, wearing Steve's sunglasses, his blue casted leg jutted out into the sand and stared into the glittering blue of the ocean. It had rained earlier in the morning, and a surreally bright double rainbow arched over the water, every hue more brilliant than the next. "Hawaii's welcomin' you home, _brah_."

Danny pulled off his sunglasses off, to behold the sapphire of the water, the green of mountains and magic of the rainbows overhead.

It wasn't entirely shocking when he started crying, blubbering without shame.

"Happy or sad?" He asked.

"Overwhelmed," Danny gasped. "Never thought…"

"I know, man."

Danny dug his fingers into the sand; smelled the air, and turned to Steve. His face was flushed red from crying, half of his head was shaved a row of black stitches hiding beneath the bandages, the side of his face was a mottled green and yellow from fading bruises that trailed into his button-up shirt, but despite it all, Danny threw his head back and laughed. It was all volume and jubilance, but for the first time in six weeks, Steve finally felt like everything would be okay.

Of course, nothing in life was ever that easy, and that happy moment on the beach was just the start of Danny's recovery. It was an unspoken assumption that he would stay with Steve when he was released from the hospital because his partner with a broken leg, healing ribs, lung damage, and a healing lacerated liver was barely mobile even after a six weeks in the hospital. Danny's recovery would be the hardest work of his life, and Steve had prepared himself to bear as much of it as he could, taking copious notes and asking his doctors and Caroline every question he could think of about his medications, rehabilitation, complications and therapy.

He'd been prepared for late nights, post-traumatic stress, erratic behavior and of course, a running commentary of complaints and rants. What he hadn't been ready for was Danny's despairing silence, his tight-lipped compliance and his refusal to take his pain medication.

After almost twenty years in the Navy, Steve thrived on routine and exercise. He was grateful for Gabby dropping by in the mornings before working to help Danny bathe, shave and change clothes. It gave him time to squeeze in a decent workout without worrying about him while he was gone. Exercise was one of the best stress relievers Steve could think of instead of blowing things up and a cathartic day at the firing range.

He returned to the house, endorphins crackling in his system, ready to attack the day. Danny had commandeered the living room, because Steve didn't want him tackling the stairs with crutches. It was almost normal to open the front door and bang into the full bed from the guest room, and seeing his endtables stacked up and tarped on the lanai.

Danny wasn't in the bed, though, the sheets remained, scattered and empty.

"Danny?"

Experience told him to pull his gun and clear the house properly. Panic had him racing to the kitchen and then the bathroom. He found Danny crumpled on the floor, sweating, crutches tossed askew. His face twisted in a familiar rigor of pain. Steve knelt down, a hand light on his shoulder. "What's wrong?"

"…too bright," Danny gasped, throwing a hand over his eyes. There were no windows in the bathroom, making it one of the darkest rooms in the house.

The world's luckiest gunshot to head had left him cursed with devastating headaches, and while his neurologist were confident they would eventually pass, Danny bear it until they did. "Hang on, Danno. Gimme one second." Steve stood up on legs rubbery from a four-mile run and ran to the bedside table searching through Danny's medications. He picked up the bottle intended one, frowning at its weight. Danny had only taken a few.

Back in the bathroom, Steve knelt down again, gently offered Danny the pills. "Take these."

Danny's hand shot out, knocking the pills into the toilet, groaning at the pain the movement caused, arm pressed tight against his ribs.

"What are you trying to prove? You need to take these," Steve corrected his volume when Danny jerked at his voice. "And yes, you can point out the irony of me saying this later. Take it, Danno."

"…don' need it."

"Yes, Danny, you do, enduring this it's not going to help you get better. It's making you sick, I can see it."

"No." He groaned again, an arm flailing out to twist the shower curtain at another stab of what had to be terrible pain.

Coaxing didn't work, so Steve attempted tough love. "Either take this or I'm going to shove it in your mouth and pet your throat like a dog."

"…fuck you."

Steve rubbed his sweaty forehead. He couldn't stand this. Danny's depression and the way he could just shut down had been hard enough to handle, but suffering when he did have to was too much, even if seeing his trademark bullheadedness was a little reassuring.

A shutter wracked Danny's stiff form and he made a terrifying choking noise as his eyes rolled back. Cursing, Steve leapt forward and managed to catch him before his abused head cracked against the toilet, fingers immediately moving to find his pulse. He sighed when he found it strong and a little fast beneath his fingers.

Steve's own heart was racing and he wasn't sure what to do. He could take Danny back to the hospital, but he was scared to leave him to grab the phone. "Danno, hey, man, wake up…Danny, please." He slapped his cheek. He scrubbed his knuckles over his sternum.

When that didn't work, Steve knew he needed help. As gently as he could, he eased Danny to the floor him. He angled out of the bathroom for the three seconds it took to grab the phone. When he returned, Danny's eyes fluttered. Silently, Steve soaked a cool rag and placed it on the back of his sweaty neck.

It dawned on him how much he still didn't know about what Danny had gone through when he was being held hostage. His friend was a master at keep secrets, even better than some of the best officers in naval intelligence. Steve hadn't wanted to push him, but now he wondered if he should have.

"Do you need a hospital?"

"…god no."

Steve called anyway, leaving a message with Savannah.

"There's a reason why you don't want to take these, isn't there?"

Danny nodded.

"Why?"

"…Steve, my head's killing me an' I banged my leg on the way in here…drop it."

"I've fought for you with the shrinks and I thought it was helping, but maybe it wasn't. You need to talk to someone, if not me than someone else. I'm serious, Danny."

He arduously worked his way upright. His eyes were heavy with pain that wasn't remotely physical. He cracked his knuckles and ran his fingers over his short hair. "I want a Mohawk, I think. I should find a barber."

"If that's how you want it," Steve prepared to leave, frustrated and already dead tired even though it was only seven am.

As he reached the doorway, he heard it, Danny's voice, roughened by despair and shame. "They gave me heroin, Steven. _Heroin_."

Steve froze. The shock of his confession took more than a moment to seep into his stressed mind. He whirled around, eyes wide and stomach aching. "What? Savannah never mentioned…"

"It probably got lost in the laundry list of shit that's wrong with me. When I woke up, I told the staff not to mention it. No one else knows."

Steve sputtered, illogically hurt. "What else are you keeping from me?"

"A lot of things," he said honestly. "Things they haven't even invented words to describe."

Danny and Steve stared at each other for a long minute, both grappling with the monstrous aftermath of Danny's abduction, of the questions it arose and the traumas had created for both of them.

Steve refilled the glass of water and handed Danny one pill. Regardless of confessed secrets, he couldn't have Danny enduring pain strong enough from him to pass out. "This is half of the recommended dosage. Please take it. You need some relief, Danno. They would have given it to you if they were worried about dependency. This isn't an opiate."

"But…it feels the same, like it did then."

Steve sighed. "Is it the feeling of the drug or is it the relief it gives you that feels the same?"

Danny thought about it for a minute, remembering the priceless sensation of finally being pain-free, but also the hallucinations, the undulating universe twinkling above him, the smell of New Jersey rain and the feeling of soft fur on his palms. He took the pill with a shaking hand, swallowing it dry.

Steve patted his shoulder. "I don't think you have anything to worry about. But we'll be careful."

"Hide them."

He pocketed the pills without a word. "You won't see the bottle again."

The pill only took the edge off Danny's pain, but he was no longer gray and waxy from agony, sleeping easily within a few minutes. Steve lingered while the drugs began to work, reassuring him quietly, but still disturbed by the confirmation of what he'd suspected for weeks. He was probably trying to protect him for what he'd face. Steve had done the same with Korea.

Savannah called, offering to stay with Danny while he went to work, and he agreed, selfishly grateful to get out of the house and a gun in his hand.

-50-

Adrenaline was the only drug Steve had ever needed. He'd sought it out as a child, embracing his inner daredevil. His life as a soldier had only reinforced his thorough lack of fear and the thrill of the unknown. Steve liked to leap, loved to fall and never worried about the landing. So he felt human again after strategizing and assistant HPD in the transfer of a terrorist sniper from prison to the courthouse and back again, was the challenge Steve needed. He sat in his car, ballistic vest still on, sweaty and tired from working crowd control when it got too dicey. It felt like ice churned through his veins, cooling the red-hot embers of anger over Danny's predicament.

His phone rang, and Steve waved goodnight to Chin and Kono as he checked the caller ID: CIA Director Ellis George returning his call. The Special Agent assigned to Danny's case had refused to give Steve Danny's file, so he'd called in a favor with Ellis George. "Is it too late or too early in D.C. for you to be calling me, Director?"

Ellis laughed dryly. "A little of both, I'm sure, Commander. I got those files you requested. Is there any reason why I needed to do this, you have higher clearance than me."

Steve frowned, switching to hands-free as he started the car and headed home. "The CIA cuts through the red tape faster than a guy who was suspected for killing the beloved Governor of Hawaii. I had the clearance, but they were going to build a wall of red tape, and I'm not exactly patient," Steve lied.

"Oh, so you do know about that? I thought you were oblivious," Ellis teased. "I scanned the files before I emailed them to you, and honestly there's not much there in the way of leads. The only thing of interest is the type of heroin found in Williams' system."

Steve gripped the steering wheel even tighter. Street drugs were always laced with crap more lethal than the drug itself, and he couldn't imagine what that poison had done to Danny's body. "That bad, huh?"

"No, no, Commander, _that good_. It was as pure as you can get on the street. I am not as up-to-speed on narcotics operations in Hawaii, but this grade should be easy to track. It's not much but it's a lead. I could make some more phone calls if you like. I have a few colleagues in the DEA."

Steve nearly swerved into on-coming traffic. The drone of the horn had him over-correcting and gripping the wheel with two hands. As far as he was concerned, it was a smoking gun. "There's no need, Director. There's only one source of pure heroin on the island." He said through clenched teeth.

"Who?"

"_The Yakuza_." Steve seethed. "I'll call you back."

Without a second of guilt, he threw his sirens on and proceeded to violate every traffic law with a reckless rage. His tires hit grass as he veered sloppily onto the driveway, but Steve didn't care. Throwing the truck in park, he flew into the house, banging doors open and tearing into rooms. Danny and Savannah weren't in the living room or the kitchen, but Steve saw them sitting on the porch swing of the lanai. He exploded through the door, feet pounding on the sun-faded wood. "Who shot you?" Steve hollered, terrifying them both.

Savannah started, beholding Steve in full tactical gear, and consumed by ireful disbelief.

Danny jumped too, but he scooted back, and ducked his head. Steve moved before he could comprehend it, grabbing him by the shoulders. "Who shot you, Danny? I swear to God, you need to tell me right now."

"Steve…what the hell are you doing? Let him go!" Savannah shoved at his arm.

When he didn't let go, she tried again, checking him hard with her entire body.

Desperation was a sickening impatient beast, and Steve had no know. Because suddenly it all made horrifying sense: Yakuza lieutenants pulling out of Hawaii; Danny's insistence that the FBI handle the investigation; his refusal to talk about his abduction. Steve needed it to be an outlandish coincidence, and more than that, he needed the truth.

Savannah managed to corral him back a few feet, and she stood like a pint-sized bodyguard in front of Danny as he cowered on the swing, head in his heads. He wasn't angry enough to physically touch a woman, but Steve's voice carried just fine. "Danny, just tell me, please. I have your file, so I'll-"

"You didn't..." Danny's head turned so fast his neck probably popped, and there it was. He was ashen, skin clammy and Steve could tell that he was shaking. He wrapped his arms around himself, face twisted in the rigors of trepidation. He knew. "Don't do this, Steve. Please."

"It's already done!" Steve lashed out, punching a support pole of the porch so hard that it shifted. "You know I'm not built to let this go. I have one lead and I'll follow it as far as I can, no matter what it takes. I don't even care, Danny and you know that. Who shot you? WHO SHOT YOU?"

He shuffled forward, ignoring Savannah as she tried to pushed him back, keep him away from Danny. Steve lifted his hands up, because he wouldn't touch Danny again, but his partner wasn't scared, not of his wrath, but of something else, something bigger. He met his eyes, chin trembling and shook his head. "Steven. Don't. I'm begging you. I know this goes against your very DNA, but don't."

"If you don't tell me right now, I'll just read your statement. It's your choice, Danny."

"I hate you," Danny gritted out, eyes brimming with tears. "I fucking hate you."

Steve's vision was tunneled and everything else was unimportant blurs, if Danny needed to him hate, he'd take it, no matter how painful. "Who?" Steve prompted. His chest heaved like the bellows, and the adrenaline high he'd relished in just thirty minutes ago had turned nasty and dangerous.

On his cheeks, Danny gulped for air before pinning him with wild, haunted eyes and confessing: "Wo Fat."


	8. The End In The End, A

**Hi. So sorry it's been a week since I posted. I've fought with this chapter since I started posting this story, and I couldn't get it to where I thought it should be. It's also very, very long, so I'm posting it in two parts. The other part will be up tomorrow. I'm not doing this for more feedback, I don't think I'm a Harry Potter movie, but I feel terrible leaving you guys hanging, so this will give you something to read while I'm fixing the rest of the story. **

**Thanks so much for understanding and sticking with this story.  
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><p><strong>Chapter 8 – The End In The End - Part A<br>**

_**Hour 2**_

_The happy funjuice was wearing off, and Danny grieved._

_He clawed uselessly at the dirt, saddened when it stopped glinting neon. His gaze ambled up to the pitch black sky above, where the God had hid the universe, and only found a few dimly shimmering stars._

_Pain returned slowly, licking up his ribs, oozing from his face, and thumping in his leg, grinding it to dust. With his fevered body burning off the drugs, Danny had no choice but to take the pain, let it twist him and yank animalistic sounds from his mouth. Chains rattled just over his own grunted breaths, and his hopes soared, hoping it was his dealer or maybe someone with clothes, because he was still naked._

_Moving was a physical impossibility now, so he shifted his eyes, and watched as the door swung open, and the soft light of evening caught off a pair of polished shoes as they advanced towards him with a confident, arrogant strut. Gray dress pants topped the shoes and there was white shirt beneath that. Danny's eyes finally reached the face, and he sucked in a shocked breath, gobsmacked._

_There, haloed in twilight like Lucifer himself, loomed Wo Fat. "I honestly didn't think you'd make it through." Wo Fat's beedy eyes scanned Danny's body and he lifted a leg, not to kick him, but to nudge an inquisitive spider off Danny's thigh with the tip of his shoe. "From the looks for things, just barely."_

_Danny thought he was too far gone for rage, but it festered inside of him like a cancer._

_"You just have one more task to complete before you are returned."_

_Wo Fat took pleasure in pacing around Danny's wasted, beaten body and knelt down at his side. "Tell the Commander that you're a shining example of what I can do to the people he loves. Tell him…you were first, but there are many others in his precious ohana that I can take whenever I get urge."_

_Danny gurgled with rusty laughter, feeling his broken ribs vibrate jaggedly in his chest._

_"What's so funny, Detective? Still enjoying the benefits of my products? Or are you laughing at me, you, a man who lays half-dead and naked in his own filth?"_

_He'd passed humiliation somewhere around the ice tub._

_Wo Fat stood, lifted his foot again and deliberately placed it on his chest, pushing him flat on his back. Danny whimpered as he flopped on his back, the muscles of his broken leg spasming with white-hot agony. Wo Fat knelt down again, and picked up Danny's left hand, snapping the ring finger with a deft movement. He howled, nerves overloaded._

_"I didn't think you were this hard-headed, Williams, but you have seemed to grow rather protective of Steve, haven't you? Even though you've seen what happens to people he's closest too."_

_Danny hummed, closing his puffy eyes. He had never believed that he was going to be returned safely. Wo Fat was doing nothing more than toying with his prey. The longer he was held captive, the more Danny began to make peace with his life, embracing his successes and accepting his mistakes; remembering how much he was loved and how much he had seen, even grieving over the things he'd miss: Grace getting her driver's license, her wedding day, scaring her potential boyfriends with his massive collection of handguns. His premature death had always been a possibility, and while he hadn't expected it to be quite this dramatic, he had plans in place: letters in a safe, videos with his lawyer, and an updated will._

_Danno loves you. _

_"I guess I'll have to tell him in a way that even McGarrett won't misunderstand."_

_It was time for one last act of defiance: he opened his eyes and spit on Wo Fat's shoes. He watched, prepared and crackling with life now that it was almost over, as he pulled his gun, trained it on his head and fired before Danny could do little more than flinch._

_The world splintered into a million pieces, a trillion colors and infinite emotions before settling into an absolute black._

**PRESENT**

Steve had earned a Navy and Marine Corps Medal on his first tour of Afghanistan. Mortar fire sent his helicopter careening into a cliff in a blaze of hellfire and g-forces. He'd managed to extract three men from the wreckage and covered the unit for four chaotic hours until help arrived with shrapnel embedded in his face and neck and a broken collarbone. Shock had been a physiological bubble-wrap, insulating him from breaking under intense pressure.

Hearing Danny confess that Wo Fat had shot him, and had therefore organized his abduction was not the energizing, near-superhuman jolt that shrouded him that blistering day in the Middle East. Steve staggered back on the porch, knees wobbling like half-cooked pasta, stomach curdling with nausea so intense, his hands sweat. For a second, he was unsure whether he what he wanted to do more: throw up or faint. In the end, he probably did both, because the next thing he knew, Steve's well-honed reflexes abandoned him and found himself staring at his shoes, legs in a heap beneath him. But his mind was whirring, reliving the last three months all over again—kneeling in his driveway with Danny's blood on his hands; listening to him moan and whimper in pain—and then his father's death, his arrest, Mary's kidnapping. The emotion was too much, concentrated and malignant, and before he could even comprehend what had happened, Steve was crying. Sobbing like he had at Danny's bedside, He turned, bracing himself with his good arm and spinning on his butt, so his legs dangled over the side of the porch. He heard a hard crack, and a second later, Steve's cheek stung madly. He blinked into the furious cornflower blue eyes of his partner.

Danny sat in front of him, all concern and stormy face. "_Stop_." He commanded. "You're not allowed to check out on me."

Steve's mouth tasted like spoons and he noticed the vomit staining the front of his ballistic vest. "I'm sorry," he blubbered. His sorrow was meaningless.

"No, you're not."

"Yes, I…"

Danny silenced him with a glared. "Don't make me hit you again. Because I'm telling you, Steven, I'll enjoy it."

Danny tugged off his soiled vest and tossed it away with barely a grimace, and made Steve lay flat on the porch, knees up. It took a minute to realize he was covered in sweat, his hands were cold and his heart was racing. "Where's Savannah?" He asked stupidly.

"After you treated me like a shaken baby, probably loading her tranq gun."

"Why didn't you tell me?" Steve whispered, hands shaking against the dusty porch.

Danny severed their gaze, eyes fixed on his left ring finger. It had been broken and healed, but it was still slightly crooked. "Because he wanted me to."

The cobwebs of shock were clearing and when Steve scrubbed his face dry, he could see the tightness of anger in Danny's face. He knew the silence would soon follow. Steve tried to sit up, because he didn't want Danny to shut down, because he needed to know everything that had happened to him, because of him. But he was pushed flat again. "Danny…"

"_Shut up!_" He exploded with intensity, not volume. "I asked you, no, I'm pretty sure I begged you from my damn hospital bed to leave it alone…and you decide to instead go over my head and behind my back to get my file? That's impressive, even for a ninja-freak like you."

"I was just…I wanted to…"

Danny scooted backward. "You barreled ahead like you always do, and I get it, but that's what you do to _victims_. The ones with the eyes and the tears that beg and the bereft loved ones that you for help and plead for justice. I never did that. I never wanted it, so thanks for making me feel like some helpless fuckin' civilian," he seethed. "This isn't happening to you, it happened to me. This isn't your problem, it's mine."

Steve sat up, shaking his head because he was responsible, he'd put this whole thing in motion. His pathological, blind quest for justice had snowballed and infected everyone he loved, like a cancer.

"I'm leaving."

He couldn't stop him when Danny arduously climbed to foot, hopped to his crutches and ambled away.

But Danny, even still seriously injured, could still make a hell of an exit. He'd convinced Savannah to give him a ride, and after Steve's behavior, it hadn't taken much. She helped him pack up his medications, clothes and his knee scooter and left with nothing more than an apologetic grip of his arm and a promise to call him in the morning.

-H50-

The Naughty Lei had seen better days.

It was evident in the restaurants overdone, dusty tiki décor, duct-taped booth seats, and the tacky shellacking of grime and grease that lined the tabletops and streaked the windows. The planters of tall, hibiscus plants and greenery and the steady stream of customers made distant surveillance impractical. So Steve did his best to slip seamlessly in with the crowd by ditching his cargo pants and sneakers for board shorts and flip flops, kept his eyes covered with shades and spoke primarily in pidgin, and ordered the fried squid platter and a steady stream of beer. Behind his shades and relaxed demeanor, Steve never took his eyes off Billy Sato, who held court in the upper deck of the bar and grill, flirting with girls and feasting on sushi that wasn't even on the menu.

With Danny wounded, hurt and not returning his phone calls, Steve couldn't just steep in the agonizing guilt over what he had set in motion, he couldn't climb into a bottle like his ached to do and try to drink it away as he'd tried for nearly a week. The need to act was a part of his DNA, so on that sixth morning, when his head and stomach throbbed with the ache and sickness of a merciless hangover, and his living room was destroyed, Steve dragged himself to the shower, forced himself to eat and tried to do something.

He'd settled on trailing Billy Sato, Wo Fat's third in command, and the only lieutenant to be seen in public and alive. Sato, clad in gaudy gold rings and tailored shirts, didn't seem to fazed by the apparent demise of Wo Fat's Hawaiian enterprises. He lived as loudly and ostentatiously as he had before, arriving every night in a different car, with a different girl and a trio of hulked out muscle. Steve watched with internalized disgust as Sato plucked sushi off the naked body of a waitress who couldn't have been more than seventeen, and smeared the underside with the wasabi cream that resided in her navel.

Steve wiped his mouth with a paper napkin and drained the last of his beer. He left a few crumpled dollars on the table and staggered to the bathroom. Unlike most of Steve's missions, there was no plan here. And the days of recon had been absolutely useless. He hadn't expected Sato to be snorting lines of cocaine or killing busboys for slow service, but part of him was hoping he'd slip just a little, so Steve could shoot him in the face.

Maybe then he'd be able to look at himself in the mirror.

The bathrooms were surprisingly clean, save for the odor of old urine and the flickering fluorescent lights. He did his business and headed to the dingy sink as another man entered. The man loomed abnormally close, his beer-tinged breath fanning over Steve's face. He backed up, stumbling a bit, because he was undercover as a booze-swilling local.

"Sup brah, fo' real?" Steve slurred, the pidgin feeling clumsy on his tongue.

"Fo' real, _haole_." The man, who had an impressive set of biceps covered in tribal tattoos and hazel eyes that glimmered like fire, stepped forward, backing Steve up a few feet in the small, deserted bathroom.

He moved with an agility that his bulky muscles belied and rammed Steve into the tiled wall, the awkward curve of an urinal jutted bruisingly into his back. The forearm crushing his windpipe silenced the yelp that exploded from his throat. "Don't talk, haole, _listen_. If you want answers about your brah, find Patrick Phin."

Steve's heart thumped uncomfortably hard, but he could literally see the pulse of the large man, thumping harshly from the plump vein in his neck. He wasn't just keyed up. He was scared, which meant he was helping, not hindering. Before he could nod or even signal his understanding, the bathroom door opened, and faint regret streaked across the man's face as he plunged a knee into Steve's stomach and downed him with a thunderous punch that felt like it broke his cheekbone.

His beating that followed was a lesson in restraint. As excruciating as it was to be kicked and punched and hurled into walls, it would never compare to the misery of Danny's abduction, so Steve never attempted to protect himself, didn't even make a fist. It took it willingly without screaming for help, without fighting the pain, without killing the men where they stood.

When it ended, Steve fell in a boneless heap on the dirty bathroom floor that was littered with pieces of shattered mirror that had been shattered by his elbow. The door opened—a Cleaning In-Progress sign on the front—and Sato strolled in, a crooked smirk on his face. He beheld the damage to the bathroom with a shrill whistle and clamped his muscle on the shoulder with pride. "You think I haven't noticed you actin' like my little white shadow for the past five days. I was informed that you would seek me out, and when you did that, I was to give you a message."

Sato pressed his lips into a firm line and nodded as the man who'd warned Steve, who then clamped a hand over his mouth and nose. He didn't understand why until something thin and dull plunged into the meat of his calf three times. The tiny, but deep wounds made his entire leg burn like it had been scalded, and Steve hollered into the musty palm that effectively smothered his screams. He bucked as Sato twirled the gold ice pick gleefully in his hand. "Seems like the only way you learn your lesson is when blood is spilled, McGarrett," Sato said with a shake of his head. "You ready to listen yet?"

The second his mouth was uncovered, Steve spat at his feet, straining his white, snakeskin loafers with speckles of muddy red. He was a study of rage, of concentrated hatred, and Steve didn't care if he ever left the confines of the bathroom. He didn't care that he was a man unleashed, reacting out of fury and indignation and not intelligence and objectivity. Sato shrugged and lashed out again, literally stabbing him in the back—the tip of the icepick scraping against his ribs after it messily ripped through his flesh. It hurt so much, Steve couldn't scream, could barely draw air. He clung to consciousness with dogged stupidity as blood trickled on the floor.

Sato motioned to his guard, who then pulled Steve upright and gripped his chin with painful pressure. "Listen or I start lopping off fingers."

Sato produced a small, retro tape recorder, and pressed play. Over the speaker, he heard a smooth, eerie voice, and then Danny's on rasped response, followed by horrible, blood-curdling screams. Steve's stomach tensed with nausea as his heart kicked into overdrive. He lunged forward, regretting that he hadn't put a bullet in Sato's head days ago, but the man's arms, who had both warned him and beaten him in the span of ten minutes, locked, holding him still. When Steve snarled like an attacked wolf and nearly broke free, he swiftly punched Steve's punctured calf, thwarted his attack with a parry of pain. "I will kill every single one of you with my bare hands. You have no idea the amount of shit that I can rein down upon you."

Sato never flinched. "Then Danny will be taken again." He said nonchalantly. "Or maybe we'll borrow that spitfire, Kono Kalakaua. Or your father's old partner, Chin Ho. You're in control here. You're the master of your destiny. What we do depends on what you do. You understand?"

The empowering rage whooshed out of Steve so quickly, he was lightheaded, the bathroom spinning in bewildering spirals of cracked porcelain and lime green stalls.

The pain came then, swift and breath-taking, blunted stabs at his heart that were infinitely more painful than that caused by Sato's ice pick. He realized what he hadn't in the hellish quiet of his empty house and the span of the past three months: Wo Fat had won. While Steve could endure almost any punishment—his body was freakishly resilient—Wo Fat had found and enthusiastic exploited his Achilles' heel: his family. All of this had happened because of what his father had started and what he had tried to finish. There was only one choice Steve had left to make. He had to concede, wave the proverbial white flag to prevent more blood from being spilled, more red clocks being found and more lives destroyed.

"I understand."

-H50-

The Yakuza wasted no time in testing the boundaries of their newfound arrangement. Chin Ho Kelly knocked loudly before entering Steve's house just three days after his rendezvous with Sato in the men's room, a file tucked under his arm. Steve quickly angled into a shirt, covering the bluish-black bands of bruises, the swollen punctures on his back, and his elbow that was a bloody mess of jagged lacerations. Chin winced at Steve's face, eyeing his puffed black eye and bruised jaw with the scrutiny of a seasoned detective. "I don't want to know what the Navy SEALs do to enemies if that's from a sparring session," he said in a tone that revealed that he knew Steve was lying, but wouldn't press it.

"You should see the other guy," Steve grimaced where he sat on the couch, his heavily bandaged calf concealed by dark sweatpants. "I'm all right, Chin, just resting while things are slow." His smile was tight and he pushed himself up, barely masking a wince. "Whatcha got? Anything on Patrick Phin?"

"As far as we can tell he's a street kid who's dabbled in courier work for low-level drug dealers but was scared straight when he was arrested. The possession charge was tossed out on a technicality. He hasn't been seen since, but with no known address, it'll be hard to find him." Chin Ho explained carefully. "What I got for you is some movement on the Yakuza—that should brighten your day. A CI tells me a shipment of product is coming in on the north side of the island tomorrow. If you're up for it…"

Steve's face prickled with heat and his stab wounds throbbed. "Kick it to the DEA."

Chin Ho did an honest-to-goodness double-take, eyes flaring as he regarded his colleague and friend. "Are you sure you're not concussed? This is something you've been waiting for…"

"And I'm saying give the case to the DEA. With Danny gone, we're understaffed, and I'm not exactly battle ready. They can handle it."

"Steve…what aren't you telling me? You gone on ops with a bullet in your shoulder."

"I'm telling you to let it go!" Steve yelled. He swore, and palmed his throbbing head. He hated lying to Chin, but it was safer this way. "The governor's on my ass to hire a new detective." He kicked the table, holding a pile of candidates with disgust. "I'm just…on edge right now."

"Why?" Chin asked carefully, and then fearfully. "Danny's a pitbull. Tell the governor that he's coming back. He is coming back, right?"

He shook his head, thinking about Danny's horrified face when he found out Steve had betrayed him and Rachel's call to him two days ago, that her ex-husband had had a seizure while alone in the guest house, how the neurologists were optimistic, but he was banned from driving, let alone wielding a firearm until he was seizure-free for six months, how Danny had asked that he not come to the hospital. "No, Chin, he's not coming back."


	9. The End In The End, B

Thanks so much for your patience and all of the support. I'm done! This is the ending I always planned. I'm not sure if everyone will dig it, so please let me know.**  
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><p><strong>Chapter 8 – The End In The End<strong>

The noise rebounding off the mountainous skyscrapers was more disorienting than the glare of snow and serpentine freeways that stretched into the steel horizon.

Steve shivered in his puffy down coat that still boasted the tags and gripped his bag tightly. He was actually nervous, freaked out by the prospect of seeing Danny after more than four months.

As soon as Danny had been able to travel, he'd left for New Jersey as everyone's paradise had turned to his literal hell.

He'd called timidly requesting Steve's presence, and Steve had been packed and at the airport within the hour, catching a red-eye to L.A., paced during the eleven-hour layover at LAX, and tapped his knee during the six-hour flight to JFK. He was exhausted after nearly a day of travel and felt claustrophobic as the van jerked and sped through the New York City buildings that blotted out sun and sky. Steve was late for their meeting, but when the van parked in front of a Manhattan skyscraper, he hesitated, staring at it through the slush-and-salt splattered window. He paid the driver and slipped through the slush of winter. His puffy coat crunched and crinkled as he walked through the marble-drenched lobby, but he ignored it and kept it on because Steve hadn't experience winter in nearly six years, and he was _freezing_.

He was directed to a suite on the twenty-seventh floor.

The office was little more than a narrow slip of space outfitted with a small desk, a wall of built-in book shelves, a cornflower blue love seat and a chair in front of the large window. There was a woman standing at the desk with short cropped hair that was shaved on one side. She wore a maroon cowl neck sweater and a chunky, spiked necklace that swung wildly when he knocked and she jumped.

"Commander McGarrett, I hope." She said, sunny and smiling.

"Yes, I am. Nice to meet you…"

"Dr. Molly Avery. I'm Danny's therapist." She shook his hand heartily and offered him a seat on the couch.

Steve obliged, his puffy coat wheezing and squeaking as he moved. "Danny and I have been doing some intensive work to help him cope with his ordeal back in Hawaii. He's reached a step in his treatment where he needs to share some details of his ordeal with those close to him." She explained softly.

Steve grimaced, the chill of winter was swapped with an anxious heat. "Um…is he doing okay?"

Molly smiled and her warmth was palpable. "He's doing quite well, Commander."

He pushed the relief down, not ready to believe it. "Steve is fine, Dr. Avery." He said. "So he wants to t-talk about it? With me? It's kind of my fault."

"Yes, he does. This won't be an easy meeting for anyone involved, but it's a big step for Danny in getting his life back. And it's not your fault, Steve. Do you have anything you'd like to tell me before we begin?"

Steve waved her off. "Don't worry about me. I'm here for him."

"If you're sure, I'll go get Danny."

Steve stood as she did. It was better for him to keep his mind clear, so he studied to objects on her bookshelves. Colorful framed Rorschach inkblots, a jar of brightly colored rubberband balls, a jar of sand with an Irish flag tucked inside, an LED cheeseboard and old, classic books.

He heard the scuff of shoes against the tiled floor and looked up to see the ball of a shoulder, and a second later Danny Williams emerged, all sheepishness and bright blue eyes and healthy complexion. Steve felt something nasty and hateful and guilty loosen within him and wither away. He stared at him, dumb and unsure of what to say. Danny was thin, but the broad shoulders were still there. He walked with a slight limp—a testament that his broken leg was still healing. He'd made good on his promise to get a mauxhawk. The sides of his hair had been cropped close while the top was longer but shorter than Steve had ever seen it; he knew rebellion when he saw it, and that was the most encouraging thing of all. Danny smiled shyly in a manner that reminded him of Grace.

The silence between them crackled like electricity until Danny stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jeans and chuckled lightly. "You look like the Michelin man in that coat, _brah_."

Steve shrugged the nosy thing off and tossed it on the couch. "I bought it at the airport. It's like 40 degrees in L.A, and like Antarctica here."

"That explains it then," he said. "Thanks for coming…I know I just went 'poof'…that's usually your schtick."

Steve waved him off and dug into the bag he carried. "Grace, uh, wanted me to give you this," his handed him a clothing box wrapped in neon green paper and covered with metallic stickers, lightning bolts and skulls because "Danno is a boy…and boys like stuff like that." It was dented and the paper had torn at the edges, but Danny held it like it was an Oscar. "She's learning how to bake…" And she also wanted me to…uh, give you something else."

Steve paused, but eventually ventured forward, opening his arms. He hugged Danny, softly at first, because the last version of his partner had been more broken than healed, but when Danny embraced him with strength, so Steve did too, fisting the shoulder of his grey sweater.

Danny pulled back and nodded, wiping his eyes. "Let's get this shit over with." He said and headed to Molly's loaded shelves. He plucked a multi-colored rubber band ball out of the jar and plopped on the couch, threading a half-dozen bands over his wrist and tossing the ball from hand to hand.

Molly took the straight-backed wooden chair adjacent to the sofa. "As a therapist, I specialize in patients with PTSD and who have experienced traumatic events. Danny felt that by keeping his ordeal would protect those he loved, but it has only isolated him from his friends and family." She turned to her patient. Steve sat on the couch next to Danny, laying his coat along the back of it. Molly looked at him with dark brown eyes. "Danny's been working very hard to overcome his PTSD, insomnia and the emotions created by the trauma of his kidnapping. He came here to heal physically as well. Today is all about letting people back in by sharing his ordeal and not pushing them away. This is a safe environment, free of judgment and you can tell Steve as much or as little as you can."

"I, uh, broke up with Gabby." Danny confessed. "And I was mean when I did it."

Steve swallowed hard. "Danny, I understand how…hard this can be. I've been there, and it can change you forever, but it can also make you stronger."

Danny's mouth turned down like he'd tasted something bad. "I'm impotent, Steven, so I call bullshit on that."

Steve didn't blink or flinch, even though his stomach muscles clenched in sympathy. "For now. No one was expecting you to be okay. We were just glad that you were alive."

"Well, I wasn't. Part of me still isn't. I don't feel clean or whole and I'm not like you, I don't just bounce back. I don't deserve to, really."

Molly leaned forward and placed a hand on Danny's knee. "Danny, look at me. It's time to tell him. Stay present in this moment and tell him."

Danny nodded, snapping the rubber bands so they cracked painfully against his skin. He opened his mouth, clicked it shut, and opened it again. It took long minutes of Danny trying and failing and then doggedly trying again before he gained any traction. "I p-pulled over because of a stalled car. The woman was bleeding, and I could see the car seat. Never noticed it was empty," Danny began. "It happened too fast—the abduction—and I couldn't stop it no matter how hard I tried. They kept me in a shack with no light, no toilet, no water. I could only tell the time by the rising of the heat, the sound of the birds…"

From there it unspooled furiously in some places and stutteringly in others. But Steve heard it all in sobering detail, the cage match, the silver tub of ice water, the interrogation with the cattle prod, the slicing of his artery, his desire to die, the heroin. Wo Fat. It was all punctuated by Danny snapping the rubber bands until the inside of his wrist was swollen and red. Once Danny had started, he couldn't stop, so he ruminated on the panic attacks he'd suffered, how he saw everything as a threat, even Steve, and how he wanted to kill himself after he had the seizure, overwhelmed by the thought of a broken brain. And how he couldn't be alone with Grace without feeling like he was destroying her innocence. Neither Danny nor Steve's eyes were dry by the end of it. Danny was sweating, physically exhausted and needed to take a break to splash water on his face.

Steve needed to throw up.

When he returned, Danny took his place on the couch and covered his face with his hands. "My head's killing me."

"There's Tylenol in the desk drawer," Molly said.

"I'm fine," he insisted.

"Danny, you've been very brave and very open, and I'm proud of you. Do you want to tell Steve the rest? You do that and you're done. You won't have to do it again."

"I hate you," he spat without sentiment. He didn't look at Steve, but instead spoke to his sneakers. "I-I don't know if I'll ever be a cop again. And I'm okay with that, I think. I'll miss it, but I'm just. I can't even touch a gun anymore. I have a panic attack if I try."

Steve's eyes flew to Molly's and she nodded. He scooted forward, closer to Danny, and asked, "Why, Danny? You can tell me."

"Um…I-I texted you right, you got those?"

"Yeah. We couldn't trace them. It was routed through too many towers."

"I stole one of the guard's phones…and they found out. I-I thought he'd kill me. But instead he dragged this poor kid into the shack. He had him in a fuckin' dog collar and…he told me I had to kill him because he'd allowed his phone to be stolen. I couldn't do it, Steve, like, every fiber in my body told me not to do it…and I was so tired and I knew he'd kill me anyway. But then he threatened Grace and…Charlie, because he knows I love that kid even though he has no one atom of my DNA. I pulled the trigger…shot him…and it was easier than I thought," Danny sobbed openly. "It took him h-hours to die…and then they left him there. In that fuckin' oven. Do you know what heat does to a dead body?"

Steve almost vomited, felt the hot, acidic rush of his throat. But he forced it down, because it wasn't about his pain, it was about Danny's.

He went quiet, and Steve did too, as if it was a moment of silence for the poor kid he'd been forced the kill. When he didn't speak again, Steve touched his arm and spoke as honestly as he could, "I'm glad you killed him."

Both Molly and Danny looked at him like he'd gone insane.

Steve was keyed up on emotions and memories of his own. He looked at Molly. "Are you recording this?"

"Yes."

"Turn it off."

Molly didn't hesitate, she headed for her laptop and made a few pointed clicks and sat back down.

"I was captured during an 'international conflict' before I was a SEAL. It was me and four other soldiers stuck in these mudhuts in the dessert. We were there for two days and the other three soldiers died. I knew this because they hung the bodies outside of their huts, where the birds could get them. When they came for me, to torture me like they had the others, I killed them all. With my bare hands," Steve's hands were shaking. And he understood why Danny used to rubber bands, that the brief snap of pain kept him from falling into the ugliness of his memories, kept his tethered to the present. "One of them couldn't have been more than sixteen; his voice was still changing. I hate myself every day for what I did to him, but I'd do it again, because I'm a soldier and what he was doing was wrong. It was him or me." Steve turned to him, and placed a hand on his knee. "Danny, it was his choice to break the law and his choice to hurt you, so bravo," Steve's claps echoed throughout the room like gunshots. "As horrible as taking a human life is, I don't want you wasting another second feeling bad for what you did. I want you to be accept it because you're still alive, and the world is better for it."

Danny gazed at him with wide, teary eyes before he looked at Molly. "Can you prescribe something for him too? He's nuts."

Molly smiled. "A Medal of Honor maybe. Especially if what he said got through to you."

"He has three." Danny deadpanned.

Molly's face unfolded in surprise. "The whole point of this is for you to see that no one is going to judge you for what you had to do to survive. Is that sinking in a little bit?"

"If I said it was, can I go home?" he begged.

She rolled her eyes. "Only because you did so well today, yes. I'll see you Thursday. Commander, _thank you_."

They walked to a few blocks to a small authentic Italian restaurant that was covered in white Christmas lights and actually smelled like Italy. Danny ordered a vat of delicious pasta and Steve ignored his normal sensibilities and got a pizza with bacon and arugula. They ate in silence, enjoying the fantastic food and letting the traumas of the day settle a little. Steve quirked his eyebrows when Danny pulled out a capsule of medications and swallowed them with a sip of cola. "I'm fine, babe. Minus my malfunctioning junk."

"Dude, I'm eating here. Stop ruining it." He groaned. "No more seizures?"

"Not a one," he said with a knock on the table. "My liver function's normal. My leg needs another few weeks of rehab…I got the pins out last month…and my arm's ugly as sin, but it's the best it's going to get."

"That's great, Danny."

"Do you think I could be a cop again?"

Steve stole a forkful of Danny's pasta, groaning as he tasted the rich sauce and salty cheese. "I think you better take your job again before I toss your replacement into a volcano. I was interrogating a guy, and I did my whole 'oh look, I have a grenade' bit and he peed himself. Not even a little. The whole front of his pants. He just can't hang, _brah_. I don't think he's ever fired his gun."

Danny chuckled. "So I'm missed, huh?"

"More than you know. Gabby calls ever week."

"She wants a baby. No, she wants to give me a baby." Danny confessed. "What am I supposed to tell her? I'm too fucked up to even be excited about that?"

"You tell her the truth, Danno."

"I'm doing my best, man. When are you heading back?"

He leaned back in his chair. "I got nowhere to be. Thought we could catch a Knicks game, maybe you could show me around."

"I'm going to pretend you said Nets, not Knicks." Danny said, affronted. "What did you do? I mean, to ensure my safety? My spidey sense is tingling."

Steve shrugged, thinking about the four cases he'd pushed to the DEA or the FBI and how the governor had expressed his concerns over Five-0's usefulness and how the punctures in his calf and back had gotten so infected, he'd gotten blood poisoning. "Nothing I can't handle."

"Why don't I believe you?"

Steve's eyes sparkled. "Because you know better."

"You were talking about truths earlier? Here's one that's long overdue: I never blamed you for what happened to me, not for a second. And it's time for you to stop beating yourself up about it. Literally."

Steve's face burned with warmth. "You talked to Chin?"

"Savannah called Kono when you were hospitalized with blood poisoning. So again, I asked what the hell did you do?"

Steve shrugged his shoulders innocently and tore into the last of his pizza.

Danny sat back in his chair, glaring. "I guess I'll have to come back and keep an eye on you then."

-H50-

It all ended with Patrick Phin.

His shark-mangled remains had washed ashore, his fingerprints flagged from his earlier arrest. Thanks to the wonders of science and the genius of Dr. Bergman, they were able to locate where he'd been killed based on the rich dirt embedded in clothes and wounds.

Danny pressed his lips into firm line as the helicopter gently thumped against the ground in a tornado of swirling red dirt and flatten wild grasses.

Once the blades stopped spinning, he exited, shouldering his backpack and trudging up the rolling hills. He'd been held at a defunct coffee farm. Danny had merely glimpsed the satellite photos of a collection of sheds made of corrugated metal that peppered the now eroded land, and nearly passed out.

It was even more surreal now as they crested over the top of the hill and looked down on the four sheds made of corrugated metal, barbed wire and concrete. Danny snapped his rubber band and descended down the rocky hill, catching the scent of flowers and coffee from the working farm a mile away.

Steve was his shadow and support as Danny approached each shed, studying it carefully. He felt nothing as he studied each one until he reached the last. It was the newest, soundly constructed and painted a jaunty red. Danny heard the echoes of his own screams, felt the ghosts of old pain twinging in his braced leg, as he trudged through the overgrown grasses that peppered the land. He knelt down and swept away the wild grasses, smelling the same earth from his nightmares. And there he'd found it, the foot-wide trench that still bore the grooves of his fingers. His body prickled with heat as his goosebumps rose on his arms. He stood and ran into the shed, finding a buried length of chain and seeing the other two trenches.

"I dug those for ventilation." Danny said calmly.

He felt oddly detached as he left the shed and explored more, re-tracing the horrors there, finding the scratches in a slab of concrete made by the silver tub, and a few discarded zipties. Rage and hatred and angst suddenly overtook him and he was hollering into the open air and sunny sky before he ever felt the urge to do so. "FUCK!" He screamed nonsense and flailed wildly just to burn off the rage, hands hitting the side of the cage.

This place had broken him, had left him riddled with physical and psychological pains that would never go away, had given him night terrors and stolen time with his daughter. It had scarred him inside and out, and standing in the very spot had only intensified that fact, had only made it more real. He threw rocks at the sheds and a tantrum that had been seven months coming. It felt horrible and cathartic at the same time.

Steve was holding him when he could finally think rationally, panting in the grass, throat on fire and eyes wet. Danny clung to him, passed the point of humiliation, and pressed his face into Steve's shoulder.

"Gimme your gun," he muttered into Steve's shirt.

"What?" He pulled back and ducked down to catch his eyes.

Danny stood up, swaying a little and fluttered his fingers with impatience. "Gimme your gun."

"Are you sure?"

"Not at all."

Steve handed over his firearm with justified caution. A trip to the gun range last month had ended with up Danny having a panic attack, and Steve nearly killing an attendant who made fun of him.

The steel was cold in his hand, but Danny gripped the handle tightly, refusing to back down. His chest tightened and his hands shook, but he thumbed off the safety, working on ingrained muscle memory. He ignored the wisps of Patrick's dying breaths, the moans of pain, and pulled the slide back. The gun trembled madly as Danny tried to aim, so he turned towards the trees. He didn't close his eyes because he knew he'd see Wo Fat's evil face smiling in satisfaction and the barrel of a gun.

He drew in a shaky breath and pulled the trigger. Once . Twice. Three times. He fired until the gun was empty, and the worst of his anxiety had peaked.

He handed it back to Steve, who was grinning like a proud father. "Remember what I promised you in the hospital about burning their house down?"

Danny wiped his face and grunted.

"I keep my promises."

Out of the hills, came the Navy SEALs of Team Five—the men who Danny had joined to rescue Steve in North Korea. "This land belongs to the Navy now, _brah_. We can whatever we want on it," Grady, a tall man with brown skin and shorn hair, hinted. "And you know how we like to spend a gorgeous Saturday afternoon."

"You want to watch or you want to join us?" Steve asked, quirking his eyebrows and holding up a grenade. "It'll be fun to actually see this thing explode."

"I'm so in," Danny said.

The four sheds were destroyed in a matter of minutes, first riddled with gunfire that punched right through the metal, and then disparaged and scarred by grenades. Danny watched as the cabins exploded in a blast of wind and heat, the rumbling of the ground and calamitous noise. The smoke curled, gray and thick, towards the sky and Danny walked from cover and down through the rubble and helped the SEALs extinguish the fires. The ground was a scorched, sizzling earth. Danny's mother had told him during sad times that "from darkness came light." The ash would enrich the soil and from that soil would grown the finest of coffees or the prettiest of flowers. Danny had been scarred and burned back to nothing but frayed nerves and raw fear, but maybe he could rebound like the soil would. Maybe he could regain what he had lost, and be better for it—a better cop, a better father, a better boyfriend, a better man.

During the flight home, as they soared over the glittering water and into the orange glare of the son, Danny felt like a Phoenix, born again, and stronger for it.

"Hey, Steve," he muttered over the crackling of the radio. "How about you help me get my badge back?"

Steve's smile was slow, but vibrant and he whooped into his mouthpiece, swirling the joystick so the helicopter veered and dipped.

And Danny just laughed.


End file.
